Ok, I’ve scoured the internet, and I can’t find a ringtone for the march Rolling Thunder, composed (I believe) by Henry Fillmore. I have the technical ability, but don’t really want to use Noteworthy composer to make a .mid of it. I would like it to be about 30 seconds in length or so. There are three (3) US dollars up for grabs, payable by PayPal. The last sentence is negotiable, but it probably wouldn’t take much effort to do this by someone who knows what they’re doing.
If anyone is interested, post something here, and I can point you towards an amazon.com preview of the song, or email you an mp3 of our school performing it.
That’s not a good assumption to make in these litigious times.
My impression (from various threads on music and law here at the SDMB) is that the performance and the composition are often licensed separately.
The Air Force may own or have licensed those recordings from the performers and composer ‘for private home use’ (as it so often says on CDs, for instance), but may not have allowed the home listener to further license them, so to speak, for public performance as a ringtone. The linked downloads page mentions:
Your best bet if creating a midi-type ringtone, where the phone peroforms the piece based on the midi file, would be to track down the composer of the music and see whether it is available for a new performance (i.e. in your phone). If the original composition is in the public domain, is licensed under one of the ‘free’ licenses (such as the Creative Commons licenses above), or you can come to terms on a license, you’re home free. You can go ahead and make your midi file no problem.
If you want to use a wav-type ringtone, which is really a recording of a previously-existing performance, you’d have to find one that was offered for public performance under terms that were agreeable to you. This is true even if the composition is in the public domain: the recording and the performance may not be.
(I’m trying to think like a music-industry lawyer here. :: shudder :: )
Some further thoughts after looking at the linked USAF page some more…
Look at what songs are actually offered as downloads: it’s either songs that presumably belong to the Air Force or the US government (The Air Force March, for instance, which they would have every right to offer as they see fit, both performance and composition), or songs that presumably are in the public domain, and which they can perform freely. All the other songs on the CDs (such as the Imperial March from Star Wars) are not offered for download.
It’s interesting to see which Christmas songs are offered as downloads and which aren’t.
