Creative control of who records

  • Thread starter Thread starter rjt
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rjt

rjt

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I have several friends who recorded albums. They said that if you want to record someone else's song, they can't stop you as long as you pay the royalty... 5 or 10 cents per CD or whatever. Someone else told me that a friend of theirs had wanted to record a Disney tune and was refused permission, but they didn't know if their friend had asked to record it royalty free. My question... does the songwriter (owner) have creative control if someone is willing to pay the royalty??
 
No. According to copyright law, as long as a song was previously published, anyone can rerecord the song provided they pay the statutory mechanical royalties. Currently the statuatory rate is 7.55 cents/song (see also http://www.nmpa.org/pr/royaltyrate.html)

A copyright owner DOes have a right to refuse permission if the cover artist CHAnges the words of the song. Changing their copyright alters the song from their original concept and they DO have a right to refuse. But as far as doing a song as-is, you don't have to have prior permission. Just contact the publisher, ask for a mechanical royalty agreement for XXXX song, pay the bill based on the number of CDs that you print up and do the same when you print up more CDs. Another method is to use the Harry Fox Agency as a middleman between you and the publisher, but you can only use Harry Fox if that publisher has signed up with Harry Fox. (HFA is at http://www.nmpa.org ) It's also possible to try to negotiate a lower rate than the statuatory rate (commonly 75-80% of the statuatory rate), but this usually only works when you are a multi-platinum selling artist and a publisher's refusal could cost them a $500,000 in royalties if the multi-platinum artist didn't put the song on the CD.

Rev E
 
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