Here, reference is made to a new stanza Joan Baez (or someone) has added to a Dylan song, which she performed. Assuming Dylan didn’t write these lines, did he have to approve them before they could be added to Baez’s version, either on record or in performance?
I often noodle with lyrics, and sometimes I add a stanza or two to someone’s song, but I wonder if I could get in trouble by performing a song with lyrics that the author wouldn’t approve. For example, I have written a (IMO) kick-ass final stanza to Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows” that I play for friends sometimes that seems more Cohen-like than Cohen–but does Cohen have any say over what I do to his song, as long as he gets paid his royalties for my performance of it?
This is a very “uncool” example but I seem to recall that when Jessica Simpson covered ‘These Boots Are Made For Walkin’, her version added new verses (in fact I think she replaced the old verses entirely), and she needed to get permission to do so. In the deal that they struck, the lyrics were allowed to be changed but the writing credits on the song would stay the same and any lyricists who added those new verses would not get a credit.
So I believe you need to get permission but what would happen with royalties/credits/so forth may be a case-by-case thing, I’m not sure.
It’s my understanding that as long as royalties are paid you can sing whatever lyrics you want. Songwriters have little control over who sings their songs or how they sing them.
Well, maybe it’s just me. I’ll try to find the stanza and post it, if you like. Then you can shit all over me, tell me what a twat and no-talent jackoff I am, conceited and pretentious both, who doesn’t know shit about fuckall and knows even less fuckall about shit.
Unless you’d like to do that now, and get it over with.
Actually, I’ve got a VHS tape of me performing the Cohen song somewhere (I wrote the extra lyrics to discuss “allusion” in a poetry course at some point, so there are all these allusions in it, to Yeats, I think, and to some other poet, I forget who, which seems Cohen-like enough to me, plus some cynical remarks about religion, which seems Cohen-like, and prr-like, to me too). What’s the story on royalty payments for songs performed on YouTube? If I can download it onto Youtube, there’s no royalties involved, is there? I mean, I see all these dweebs with about as much talent as I have (guitar and voice both–“I was born with the gift of a golden voice”) and I can’t imagine that they pay any royalties for performing covers of peoples’ song–or is that just a limited imagination on my part?
Youtube is the wild west as far as royalties are concerned.
While technically you can’t put a recording up there without paying ASCAP fees, that is indifferently enforced. Usually the song stays up until the songwriter/musician files a takedown request.
“Everybody knows that Cain is Abel.
Everybody knows Jesus Christ.
Everybody knows the Tower of Babel
makes consumer products overpriced.
Everybody knows that love has fled,
it’s exactly like the poet said,
she’s a red, red rose. And everybody knows.”
If you sing a song on your own, that is fair use, no royalties necessary.
You sing a song in private for friends, again, fair use, no royalties.
You sing a song in public, free of charge people happen to hear you, fair use, no royalties.
You charge admission for people to hear you, violates fair use and you owe royalties.
You don’t charge for the performance, but perform in a commercial venue such that you have an affiliation with the commercial venture (e.g. you are employed by a restaurant that charges for meals, and as part of the atmosphere of the place you sing a song that is not itemized in the cost of the food), it violates fair use and you owe royalties.
Youtube is … still being sorted out. On the one hand, you are singing for free, posting to share for free, just happens to be a public venue. Theoretically, you are not getting compensation and it is not a commercial venture, so fair use should apply. Alternately, youtube is a commercial venture (they make money), so them posting the music arguably violates fair use and requires royalties. Reality is that the owner/songwriter has to complain, then youtube will take it down rather than have to pay royalties for what the users are doing.
