I have a friend who wants to make a dance instructional video to sell. Who does he talk to in order to get a license to include music (existing recordings, not new stuff)? Is this covered by ASCAP/BMI, or does he go directly to the publisher, or what?
Contact whoever’s name appears after “Copyright” on the package. This is usually the publishing company, who I presume will refer you to a licensing division.
Be prepard to pay big.
You may want to look into licensing some independant music instead. Have a look what online musicians are doing at the Acid Planet ( http://www.acidplanet.com/artists/default.asp ) are doing. Some music found there is as good as anything you’ll find from the big labels, and a lot of it can be licensed for peanuts.
Geez, what’s with all the music quesitons lately?..
ENugent first go to Songfile.com and do a search by title or artist – that will get you the songwriter’s name and tell you if you have to go through Harry Fox, ASCAP or BMI.
Because the music is to be included on an audio visual work your friend will need a Mechanical Licence and a Synchronization Licence. (If you need more info on what those are visit this site and look them up in the glossary.)
Costs of a master/synch licenses depends largely on the market value of the music (whether it’s by a popular performer or an unknown). Aim for an indie musician otherwise it’ll be prohibitively expensive.
I was just going to add that you should contact a copyright collection organization when I saw Eats_Crayons post. Thanks, I didn’t manage to find the U.S. equivalents.
Just adding a question: is popular music really prohibitively expensive to license in the U.S.? I once looked up the rates in The Netherlandse (www.buma.nl), and these seemed fair and not prohibitive. Think in the order of a dollar per song per copy, when producing small collections, and much less if you were talking big numbers. I understand that every dime counts when you are trying to make a profit, but these rates do not prohibit that.
TTT It depends on the nature of the licence and whose music you’re using. Mechanical Licences for example will cost you the “statutory rate” (usually in the ball park of 7 cents a song per copy, depending on which country you’re in) – but that is for use in a sound recording only. So if your band is doing a cover version of someone elses’s song to release on your own CD, it’s not that bad (if you’re going to manufacture 500-2500 CDs though, you usually have to pay the licencing fees up front).
Master and Synch Licences (needed to use songs or parts of songs in audio visual works) will cost you whatever the copyright owners feel they can bleed out of you before you give up and look somewhere else.
Quick adendum to avoid confusion:
Master Use Licences are required anytime someone else’s existing performance is being used. Such as if you use sampled audio (like the snipped of opera in David Ushers song “black, Black Heart”), using it in an advertisement (like “Start Me Up” in Windows95 ads), remixes that feature original performances, or compilation CDs that feature original performances (like “Dance Hits 2003!” type stuff.)
Again if you look it up at the glossary I linked to above, there are lots of examples.
And another thank you for the quick reply. Yes, this makes much more sense. The thing is, in European law the license for using the song and for using the performance is covered by two different kinds of law (copyright and neighboring rights) and two diferent organizations (although these are closely cooperating). When I had to check rates it was a case of people playing the music themselves; I see the OP indeed wants to use existing performances.
I went through Harry Fox when I had a CD of my dad’s 1950s album created. They charged next to nothing, but it wasn’t for resale-- although they didn’t really know that. It was a pretty big pain in the butt, but I finally got the copier guy to do it.
Kalhoun for small quantities of sound recordings (500 - 2500 CDs for example), you can acquire a Mechanical License by filling in an on-line form at Songfile.com (run by Harry Fox, IIRC) and pay the statutory rate for a song in one lump sum. So say your dad’s album had 10 songs, you made 500 CDs, and the stat rate at the time was 7 cents, it would have been $350. It makes no difference if it’s for resale or if you’re giving them away for free.
You can do the same in Canada at the CMRRA’s webiste through their “pay-as-you-press” program.
The statutory rate, BTW fluctuates. It’s currently 8 cents a song (five minutes or less) in the U.S., and in Canada it’s somewhere around 7-8 cents (hard to tell because the friggin’ CMRRA webiste sucks!). The rate is not mandatory, but it provides a benchmark when deciding how much a license should be and most publishers use that figure to keep things simple.
Remember: The Mechanical License is for sound recordings only it is NOT a license that allows you to incorporate a recording into an audiovisual work (see Master Use and Synch License mentioned in above posts).