Cover License? HELP...PLEASE!

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homeuser

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Hi,

I want to upload my cover song, LEGALLY to a few mp3 sites. Mainly mp3.com and AmpCast.com. It seems I have to purchase a cover license to make this happen. Can anyone please fill me in on the details what this means? Thanks.
 
Licensing of cover material for reproduction is almost always handled by the Harry Fox Agency. For digital media distribution, look here: http://www.harryfox.com:80/digital.html . You can look up the tune on their site, identify the publisher, pay the royalty/license fee, and generally do it all right there. Check out that page, and the rest of the material on the Harry Fox site. Hope that helps...
 
Hi Skippy,

Perhaps I'm wrong, but that appears to be used for music services to license digitial compositions so they can play them and have them available on their website. Similar to a radio where they have a license and then pay out a royalty.

I need information about a cover license in digital format. Their "Mechanical License" covers if I want to place it on a cd, but nothing mentions just getting a license for downloading from the net.

Tons of people have cover songs on the various music sites, perhaps this is a grey area and no one at this point is really enforcing it, even though their agreements prohibit covers without a license.

There has to be some clear information out there somewhere how to proceed. ? ?
 
The canonical answer to all licensing questions is "call Harry Fox". The people there will be able to help you out, and they are probably the only people who can.

Licensing for digital distribution (as opposed to the usual mechanical per-unit licensing) is a whole new field. How is the royalty rate established, how is it audited, who keeps track? Search me. You can't count the records as the come off the press- a tune can be downloaded an arbitrary number of times, nowadays. They'll know, though, and they are definitely the people to contact. Good luck and let us all know what you find out!
 
Taken from the digital.htm page on Harry Fox.

"Digital licensing is the licensing of copyrighted musical compositions in digital configurations, including but not limited to, full downloads, limited-use downloads, on-demand streaming and CD burning. If you are interested in licensing for the digital use of music please fill out our new media application. "

"Copyrighted Musical Composition" Sounds like if you want to license an existing recording and then make it available on your website for others to download. I can see this being someway to make it legal for sites like Napster, etc. However, I don't see this relating to anything for a cover tune.

I have several phone calls, emails to Harry Fox waiting to be replied to. I'll see what develops. :)
 
You are confusing the performance with the composition. If you record a cover tune, you own the rights to that performance- that embodiment of the material. But you do *not* own the material itself, the composition- someone else wrote the tune and holds the copyright *to the material*. That's why this license applies to cover tunes. You are licensing the composer's work to use in your performance, which you will then record and make available via the web, presumably for money: and the composer should get a cut. That's what they mean by "copyrighted musical compositions in digital configurations", as opposed to hardware format covered by the standard mechanical license (records, tapes, CDs). The composition isn't yours, and should be licensed.

Many people don't bother doing the licensing work. In the current business climate, that's not wise: it can and will come back to bite, if you have success. If you have a hit with someone elses' tune (e.g., a cover), you _will_ be hearing from Fox. And that's the reason that you want to start your own publishing company, and hook it up with HFA: when someone covers _your_ original tune, they owe you 7 cents per hardware embodiment they sell (record, tape, or CD). I have no idea what the rates wll be for the digital configuration: that's all brand new, and will probably end up looking like synchronization rights (traditionally, the use of a copyrighted musical composition in film or video). Let us know what you find out.
 
That's right...you'd be licensing the composition which is the song itself, not the performance of the song. If you intended to use the existing recording, that's another licensing matter altogether. Harry Fox also handles that, BTW.

AND, if you intend to put the song on a CD and on the web, you'll need to cover yourself with the digital license and the mechanical license.

Skippy's right in that most people don't bother with the licensing work...they're asking for trouble if it becomes a hit.

I did the mechanical license thing on a cover tune for a small run of CDs, and as I recall it was something like forty bucks. No idea on the digital license. Looks like you can't do that online, seeing as they have you fill out a PDF and mail it in.
 
HIT! HAHAhahahahahahahahahahahaha,....

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhaha,...
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhaha,...
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhaha,...
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhaha,...
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhaha,...
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhaha,...
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhaha,...
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhaha,...

HIT!...

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhaha,...
You guys kill me,... HIT!


Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhaha,...
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhaha,...
;)
 
Laugh all you want: "hit" can mean different things to different people, and in different contexts. I'm aware of a case where a barbershop quartet did a cover of a Disney tune on a record, sold 500 copies (which is pretty good performance in that niche market), and spent the next two years fighting Disney's lawyers. They ended up losing a fair amount of money on it. Not only did they not have the mechanical license, they also had not obtained an arrangement license (since they did their own arrangement, instead of slavishly foillowing the notes on the paper). Ugly.

Disney in particular is _brutal_ about enforcing their copyrights and all aspects of their licensing (and you can't license them through Fox, you have to go direct to Disney, and that takes a minimum of a year). This past year I produced a cd for a large chorus that had 2 Disney tunes on it, and it was *liquid mindfuck on wheels* getting licensing handled: arrangement, mechanical, performance (so they could record and sell videos). They may never sell more than the 1000 copies we did, but you'd best believe that I had all the ducks properly lined up for that. Disney's tunes are pablum, by and large, but people still seem to love them. And I'll record anything for anybody who pays me, so I want that license in place.

I'm not talking about going platinum here: I'm talking about publishers who aggressively protect their copyrighted material: all they have to do is get wind of it. If you're going to ship it in any quantity, or make it available over the Web, it makes sense to do it _right_. With the RIAA marauding throughout the land filing suits against everyone in sight, the climate is not good for running without cover.

Some publishers just don't care. And, like I said, many, many people don't bother with this. I do, and I think it makes excellent sense to do so. The digital distribution/file sharing controversy is bringing these sorts of intellectual property issues right up into the limelight, and sooner or later some of the publishers are going to realize that they can jump on that wave and extract money from people.... A handful of bucks for the license is cheap at that point, no?
 
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanx! Sorry I busted up so badly! It's a serious subject! Thanx!
 
Yep...what he said

skippy said:
Laugh all you want: "hit" can mean different things to different people
Click to expand...
For it to get ugly, the only person that has to discover your take on the music is the original artist.


A handful of bucks for the license is cheap at that point, no?
Click to expand...
The mechanical license for a cover song for a run of 500 CDs costs less than it takes to shrinkwrap the discs!
 
Thanks for the replies, here's some more for you. :) I don't want to make money with my covers, I just want to use them as a way to visit my site and download my original material as well. I don't want to make any money with the covers, by themselves. I would never include them in a cd or sell them. Just give them away for free if the user wants to listen to it. The PDF file on the digital license asks us to "make an offer" based on our financial situation. This scenario seems so new that have no way to handle it yet. :) I've contacted 2 artists on mp3.com and they said they did not purchase any cover license for their free covers posted there.

So, if I make an "un authorized" cover and simply have it for download and don't make any money with it, what do you think I'm setting myself up for? The 40-80.00 to get a mechanical license is dirt cheap and I have no problem doing this, but I'm not putting anything on a cd!! :)
 
Offer them $40.00 and see if they'll take it. It's cheap, and to Fox it's better than getting _nothing_ for their client- and if they accept it'll get you the license and leave you covered. Explicitly state in your application that the tune is not going to be used to generate revenue, and see what happens.

This whole aspect of licensing is too new, and none of us know where it is going to end up. Set a predecent by being clean about it, and you'll probably help out eveyone who wants to distribute their material via the Web. You are probably one of the first of us little guys to do this.

What are you in for if you don't? "Probably nothing" would have been the answer a year ago. Now, I don't know: the RIAA is changing the legal landscape in real time (in ways that I find downright _unbelieveable_). If their actions are upheld, for all any of us know the publishers will follow suit. I would expect the first one to do so would be Metallica's publisher, since they seem to be pretty outspoken about the whole digital distribution issue...
 
I wouldn't risk not licensing it.

Some lawyers can be pretty creative.

Many of the average Joes the RIAA has sued are not "money makers."
 
"Many of the average Joes the RIAA has sued are not "money makers."

What did they gain by suing then? Could you please elaborate? Thanks...
 
homeuser said:
"Many of the average Joes the RIAA has sued are not "money makers."

What did they gain by suing then? Could you please elaborate? Thanks...
Click to expand...

Don't know what they had to gain. Seems like trying to milk a stone, but here's some interesting reading for you, mostly related to file-sharing rather than copyright, but it's right up that alley:

http://dju.prodj.com/courses/business/c9.html
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/000354.html
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/2194151
http://www.indianastatesman.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/07/16/3f15c9c53181d

Everyone knows college students have no money. I don't know very many "wealthy" mobile DJs. I'm sorry I don't have any direct references to mechanical rights / cover songs, but I bet a little Google searching could dig some up. Point is, a successful judgement will mar your credit report regardless of whether they get money from you.
 
They are trying to fire a shot across the bows of people they regard as scofflaws. The current political climate is such that they have managed to get unprecedented powers to breach personal privacy (like demanding and _GETTING_ information from ISPs on the downloading behavior of their targets), and nobody seems inclined to stop them. Basically, right now a large business with a large legal staff can get away with essentially anything it wants to- and the RIAA is doing just that. This is called "political opportunism", or "make hay while the current administration is in power".

The message they are sending is "we want to stop illegal digital distribution of copyrighted material so that you are forced to go buy more CDs and records". I have to say that _that_ is a sensible concept, but they have gone way too far in shotgunning lawsuits. The unspoken subtext seems to be "... or we'll grind the people who do it into the dust just to make examples of them, especially yhe ones who can't defned themselves, and there's nothing you can do to stop us." I suspect that this effort will not affect CD sales one bit- but it will certainly add fuel to the fire, and is likely to get a good old backlash going.

Or we can always hope.
 
hmm... I had an email from a post in the newsgroups about this subject, and they said the only thing that will happen if the song becomes popular (without a cover license) is you will get a "cease and desist" order to take the file off of the music website.

And I'm probably in no danger of that happening. :)
 
Harry Fox FINALLY got a hold of me. There STILL is nothing setup for this yet. (Cover license for downloads.) They said they may have something setup in the near future. So for now, I wouldn't worry about getting sued unless you are making money, selling cd's, licensing out your covers, without some kind of mechanical license in place. Will keep you posted... (especially since my mp3 is live on mp3.com now!!)
 
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