Legalities of distributing music from MIDI files

[R. D. Davis]

While trying to put together some music for riding to (e.g..
musical freestyle for classical riding), I obtained quite a few
MIDI files that I like, then, after putting together a sound font
collection that I like, I created .wav files from them, edited
the wav files to shorten them, then ran them through the mixing
console and rack gear to make a master tape (ouch, reel to reel
is becoming expensive!), from which I plan to make cassette
tapes and CDs from for my own use (e.g., to play while teaching
riding lessons). If this works for me, other equestrians may also
find this music without vocals useful to ride to. I'd like to
distribte copies to friends, and, if others like this as much as
I do, then I'm wondering how I could legally distribute this and
perhaps make a few dollars from it, but I doubt that there
would be much money involved.

The person with whom I spoke at the Harry Fox Agency
said that I'd need to contact each record label, but with about
30 different midi files from various artists, that would be
a time-consuming nightmare. Is there some simpler solution
to this? If I don't distribute this for profit, and since these
MIDI files are modified versions of the original music, am I
still breaking the law by letting others have copies of this, or
even using it myself?

 

[Hugo H]

Yep, it's not legal to distribute other people's music without paying them appropriate fees for their creations. It doesn't matter that it's not the original work, either; arrangements and/or intentions don't let you off the hook.

 

[R. D. Davis]

Yep, it's not legal to distribute other people's music without paying them appropriate fees for their creations. It doesn't matter that it's not the original work, either; arrangements and/or intentions don't let you off the hook.

One would think they'd find it to their benefit to set up some
way that's easy for people to make payments for any copies
sold, rather than go through a difficult mess. Another words,
if they had a web site somewhere that one could go to and
just pay a fee based upon the number of copies sold, without
paying a huge fee in advance, and select the artists involved,
and have that money to go them, that would be great. I'm sure
a lot of people would, hopefully anyway, do the right thing and
send in such payments; I'd be glad to do that.

When no suitable commercially obtainable version of a piece
of music exists, and one needs a modified version, and others
would also find that useful, there needs to be some way to
make it legal and easy for someone to do that. After all, if the
commercially available versions aren't adequate, and wouldn't
be purchased by those making, or getting copies of, the
modified (e.g., produced from MIDI files) versions anyway,
then no money is being lost by the recording industry, but
the recording industry would have something to gain by
cooperating with those needing/making modified versions
of the music.