Copywriting/Permission

[Titanship]

From time to time I hear radio/TV jingles in small town markets, done by "homegrown" jingle studios. They use well known hit songs, rewriting the lyrics to sell everything from cars to plumbing supplies.

I know damn well that they aren't getting permission from the record companies. Is that a "risky" thing to do? I mean, is SONY MUSIC gonna come after me if I use one of their songs for a $500 jingle, without written permission?

Titan

 

[bizarre]

I would be very carefull, it seems everyone is suing everyone because of nothing. I have no experience in it myself, but I contacted the Danish Author org. at one time, asking the law department if it would be dangerous to use one tiny sample from an American horrorfilm - they said DON'T !!!!!
.... if I heard one of my tracks used to sell some L. Ronn Hubbard project I would sure as hell sue the shit out of him
bizz

 

[ThreeDogg]

Hi.
I would simply call them and ask them how thwey are going about it. Threre could be several things: 1. They may have obtained a "blanket license" from the Harry Fox agency in NYC to use these songs. 2. they are using "needle drop" licenses which are a one-time usage for a particular song. 3. they are simply ripping off the songs, in which case, they can get into some serious legal trouble (including the radio stations running the ads). Obtaining the proper licenses, depending on what your goals are going to be can get pretty expensive. Contact Harry Fox www.harryfox.com and get all the details. Paying a little now is much better than having to pay a lot in court.

Good luck,
ThreeDogg

 

[Brad]

ThreeDogg is giving you good info -

My personal belief is that you do need to get permission, no matter how "small" you think your tune might be or if you think you might be sly or lucky enough to get away with it. The thing to remember is that the license fee you will pay to re-record something is cake compared to what you will be shelling out if you get sued. And you will probably lose that lawsuit because Dog knows Sony can afford better attorneys than most average Joe songwriters.

And that goes without mentioning the whole morality thing - it is stealing, plain & simple.

Better to be safe than sorry.

You might be surprised, those little jingle companies probably do get permission, they would really have to in order to do legit business.

Brad

 

[silentbbob]

I see you are already discussing this , hope ya'll see this. I'm using a lot of samples from classical music. Im guessing its going to be pretty hard to identify who performed the pieces, especially as there have been so many covers of the same pieces , eg bach , mozart , so do you reckon i would have to worry about getting a lisence? . also , if i take a piece of music and distort it how hard would it be for someone to prove it is thier piece of music only distorted ?

 

[Brad]

Well, if all the classical stuff you are using is Bach/Beethoven kind of stuff, it is in the public domain, which means you can use it. In this case, it is not called "doing a cover", it is called arranging. If you claim no arrangement on a previously existing piece of music, there is no back end royalty to be made. You can, however, copyright an arrangement of a work that is in the public domain and receive writer/publisher royalty shares.

I think that you might have to worry about sync license issues though. If you are using a CD cut of, for example, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of Cleveland Steamers doing a version of Bach's Invention #4, number 1, it may be someone's arrangement and therefore, you would have to license it. And number 2, if it is not an arrangement, you may have to get a sync license from the orchestra for use of their recording.

But if you are doing the playing of the music yourself (i.e. no samples) just claim copyright on your arrangement if you ever want to make some money with it.

Brad