Cover Songs

[tvanveen]

Let's say you had a few songs of original material recorded, and you wanted to add a cover song just to fill things out a bit on your cd.

How do ou go about securing rights to do so? Does this stop a lot of people from including covers on their own cd?

Thanks,

tv

[GABritton]

I wouldn't suggest putting a cover song on a "demo" CD that you might be trying to push to people unless it's a great depoarture from the original.

**Exception** to pick up small gigs you have a have a disc in hand and a lot of times they do want t copy of covers


Good luck

[tvanveen]

I was thinking more of an EP sort of thing to sell at gigs...say 4 originals and a cover.

[Scottgman]

Check out the Harry Fox Agency.

They are where the buck stops when it comes to mechanical licenses.

There are alot of guys on this board that know what they are talking about in this regard (I'm not one of them). But, from what I understand, you have to have a mechanical license to record/distribute someone else's song... period.

I've looked into myself and the rates really are pretty reasonable for most songs. There are some that may be prohibitively expensive or impossible to attain a license for use. For instance, it's well known that Led Zeppelin is very picky about who they grant licenses. If you saw the School of Rock outtakes, you saw Jack Black and the crowd begging Jimmy Page to allow them to use the Immigrant Song for the soundtrack.

Basically how it works is you pay an upfront fee and then pay royalities for each unit you sell.

My question is-- and hopefully someone can help us both-- do you have to pay royalties if you are not selling the songs? For instance, if you are making a demo CD to give to club owners and the CD has a cover song (assuming you've already obtained the mechanical license), do you have to pay royalties for each CD you give away?

[tvanveen]

That's a pretty slick site, rates seem reasonable. Thanks for the info!

[GABritton]

Legally, even if you make a disc for "get a gig" you're making money off the other bands songs, whether it's for disc slaes or not.

Now that being said, I've given out a sampler CD to bar owners with originals and covers to book gigs and I've never been asked to fork a dime to anyone. It's kind of a 'gimme'