Art Work & Cover Song legalities?

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Reece

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Hi all.

I am starting up a small portable recording studio and want to know if there are any legal issues with recording cover songs and producing a finished product like you purchase in the shops? I'm marketing it as a demo album/recording experience for them to give away as gifts to family or friends. The graphic design & artwork is free but the recording and producing is where they pay.

I know that most recording studios will record & produce a demo of anything you like but i'm being slightly different and producing a product with artwork and packaging with a professional sound AND look.

I am a trained singer, recording engineer/producer, & graphic designer and have hopefully found a way to combine these skills in one glossy package.

Are there any legal reasons why this may not work?

Thanks
 
It will all be copyrighted material.

You will need to get permission from the copyright holder to record.

In the UK music copyright is normally handled by the MCPS.

It's then quite simple.

You record the song and master the CD. You then declare to the MCPS all the songs you have recorded and who composed/wrote them. You then pay the MCPS 6.25% of the selling price of the CD as royalties.

Any songs not administered by the MCPS will have to be sorted with the individual copyright holders.

I think there is something similar in the US.

NB: you still have to pay royalties if you give the CD away for free - but the payments might be quite nominal in this case.

Important - the song writer normally holds the copyright and the royalties received are what he lives on. Recording copyright material and releasing it without paying royalties is theft and if caught the resulting payments could be very high!
 
Is it Hal Leonard that holds most of the US copyrights? And a few other agencies for permission to arrange and other things. If it's for a non-profit, the original writers are generally good about it. But not all of them. John Williams is very tight about his works. Pretty much on the don't even ask list for anything marching band or otherwise.
 
Look at that Harry Fox link, if you haven't already.

One minor clarification of an earlier post: you don't actually need the copyright holder's permission (if it's previously been released on record, you're entitled to a compulsory license), but you do need to pay the royalty. You can figure out the economics of it, but I doubt it'll shoot a hole in your plan.
 
thanks for your answers guys. when i recorded my Album of mostly covers, it was my responsibility to get the copyright clearance before i manufactured the bulk amount. this took about 4 months as big record companies usually don't take the ''small frys'' seriously.
So with my business, could i just make it the artists responsibility to get the copyright clearance lifted and still make them a one off mock up album for their own personal use? I read on another post here that cover songs can be recorded for personal use but may not be given away or sold.
I have recorded several demos at big studios and they all just gave me a burnt CD with the songs on. Technically, all i'm doing different is putting some free artwork with the burnt cd.

surely there must be a way around this?
 
Are you located outside the US?

Clearance for cover songs on a physical album (i.e. a CD, or vinyl, if you're doing that) shouldn't take four months, or even four days, and shouldn't involve record companies. Record companies own master recording rights (which can be hard to license, if not downright impossible in some circumstances). Publishers control compositions. They can't say "no," though you might need to negotiate with them if you want to get an agreement to less than the statutory royalty rate (which they might agree to in some cases). Harry Fox acts as an agent for the publishers (or at least most of them), and actually seem to have made an effort to make it pretty easy to deal with paying royalties for limited runs.

The "way around this" - in my opinion - is to pay the royalty. For a song of up to 5 minutes, its 9.1 cents per song per unit. So - say you help a client to do a 10-song CD - you'll need to charge him an additional 91 cents per copy, or eat the 91 cents yourself.

By the way: pay your taxes also.

EDITED TO ADD:

For very short runs, the fee starts to get to a bit more of an issue, as they do hit you with a processing fee, plus there's a minimum of 25 units.
 
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