Alright, I’d like to preface this by saying that I am not soliciting legal advice. That would not be nice of me. I am merely inquiring as to whether people have any prior experiance or knowledge with the following:
SisterRiddles is directing a theater group that I am in. It is to be an impov comedy soap opera. We want to play with the concept of TV as Theater as much as possible. Because of this, we want to have a Drew Carrey style dance sequence. However, one of the actors, a dancer, is very uncomfortable with using pre-recorded music for copywrite reasons. I say that A.) no record company is going to care that a theater group in Burlington, VT is using 30 seconds of a song, B.) If they DO care, we cease playing the music. Is this immoral of me? Perhaps. But we’re not attempting to pass it off as our own, we just want to do a goofy dance sequence. And, God willing, if the thing is a sucess, we are going to post a contest on our web site: “Write our Theme Song before we get arrested!” or some such.
Before I slog through intellectual property law, anyone have any experiance in this? Am I a bad person for saying “Let’s not spend our precious rehersal time squabbling over the morality of using 30 seconds of a song.” Once again, not soliciting legal advice, just inquiring as to other people’s experiances.
You need to have a licence from ASCAP or BMI to play any recorded music. From the ASCAP page (http://www.ascap.com):
“Non-dramatic” here refers to music not specially written for the stage. ASCAP doesn’t license the performance of a musical – that comes when you buy the rights to perform the play.
Now, as brittany pointed out, it’s up to ASCAP to find out about the infringement and take action. It’s not likely they’ll come after you for what you describe, simply because they won’t know.
So it’s up to you. It is an infringement, but you can probably get away with it.
Here I thought you were talking about using pre-recorded music as backup accompaniment during a vocal performance (a la karaoke tapes, or accompaniment tapes). I use those all the time.
SR, there are plenty of CDs out there that are used specifically for this purpose. You just have to do a little search at your local sheet music store. Assuming that it is decent, most will provide background type music for you at about 10-20 bucks and it won’t fall into that category where you have to pay royalties. I worked in a music store selling all types of things like that for a while. Also, my ex who is an elementary music teacher used to get that type of musci all the time because that is one of the few things that they can teach from if they aren’t actually playing the instruments and singing simultaneously.
HUGS!
Sqrl
Does it change anything if I tell you that this is going to happen in a night club? I’d assume they have a ASCAP licence, since they have DJ nights. Or is the DJ licenced? Oy, I need a nap.
Will you be profiting in any way from this theatrical presentation? That might not make a legal difference, but it makes a moral difference, at least in my opinion.
Could you have someone just play the tune on a midi synthesizer, and use that recording instead? I don’t know if that covers the legal issues either however.
Yep, Arnold. $3 a head. However, at this point, SisterRiddles has been financing it, so she needs to pay herself back. However, I’d once again like to reiterate that it’s 30 seconds of ONE song in a one hour show. Twice a month.
If the nightclub has a DJ they more than likely already have an agreement and pay fees to ASCAP/BMI. Otherwise, I see two choices: (a) Do it without paying, they’ll never know and probably won’t care; because (b) if you want to pay the fee it probably won’t be very much for such a limited performance.