my band wants to release a cover cd./.. HELP ?

E

earworm

New member
ok, here's the story,
this year i joined a pop-cover band, i'm their PAman and record their demo songs, in a short time we became very popular, we got lots of gigs and now we've recorded a demo cd of 7 songs, allmost a mini cd,
we know that we can sell alot of copies (i mean, like 500 is ALOT for a band like us!) but there's a problem

we play covers...

sweet home alabama, rocking in the free world, paranoid, narcotic,....blablabla

the thing is that we are a Live band, we made the demo to get more live gigs, but we'd like to ask a little money for it since it costed us quite some money, normally when we play live the organisation takes care of Sabam (european version of the RIAA if i'm correct) but i think its totally illegal to even HAND OUT a cd with cover songs, and isn't it super illegal to sell that kind of cd?

is there a way to kinda do this legally ? would i have to contact 7 record labels and ask them permission, i wouldn't even know where to start searching, and don't think we'll get permission, besides that i don't think the band wants to loose lots of money cause i want to play it right...

for them its just a demo cd, but i got a little recording studio and i don't want to loose this because of a stupid mistake i made, i'm member of the band so i think i'm guilty if anything goes wrong....

what do u guys think about this? :o
 
If you're only doing a small run of CDs (up to 2500) you can also do it through songfile.com (which Harry Fox website will send you to), but I don't honestly know if it covers Europe. You could probably get the proper info there though. It's really not the big deal you're thinking it is...it will cost you a few dollars is all. Good luck.
 
Not sure about Europe. The royalty system differs from country to country, it will depend on where the publisher is located. You may need to go to the publisher directly.
 
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