Sountracks, Royalties And More

5

505Angel

Member
sup guys!

how do you use comercial music like rage against the machine to soudtrack your movie? I have heard a few things in tid bits and "i thinks" about BMI and ASCAP and mechanichal royalties...

I wanted to make my movie "for promotional use only" and just have it be free, just making this thing to learn and grow personally and wanted people to be able to see a flick for free- on me...

this thing is comming out a good stride better than expected and everyone involved is feeling it package worthy. I got 2 g's to package up a 1000 copies on my own no prob there.... make a long question short:

for promotional use: how do you handle using peoples music?

for a movie to me retailed: how do you handle using peoples music?

can I have a free version on the web and a buy version both, and work it out to use peoples music?

can you use the "compalation promo" clause I have heard of for anything here?


thanks !!!!
 
Good luck...I've been trying to license music from Medeski Martin and Wood (a jazz band) for the past month or so. Basically, my conclusion is that unless you're big time or at least have a large budget the labels aren't interested. For all their griping about people downloading their music illegaly you'd think they would make it easier for people to license their stuff.

What I've found so far: you have to contact both the label and the publisher to acquire rights. The label owns the recording and the publisher owns the distribution rights. Whatever you pay to one has to be paid to the other as well as a synchronization fee. Even if you manage to reach someone to give you a price, it's almost certain to exceed your budget. Ironic, especially considering the overall message of Rage Against The Machine's music. The thing is that the bands don't own any of the rights to their own songs once they're signed to a label, so you have to deal with suits and not artists.

Best of luck...don't want to discourage you, but I've basically concluded that for the time being I'll only work with smaller bands for my projects.
 
Make sure wether its a small band or a well known artist that you have a contract thats nailed down with all of the specifics spelled out. How and when and where their music will be used and that they agree to all forms of uses that you will be needing. You don't want to have to go back and redo contracts and you need a contract each a every time you do a different project. You can't afford to take a chance and use someones music just because you like it or that it fits the feel or mood. Here in the Seattle area about 5 years ago two guys made different software CDs and dropped music from well known artists they liked on their projects and one settled for $150,000.00 and the other was over $200K.

Even with a unknown band that you like or they might be a friend, you still need a contract thats nailed down with specifics. They might get signed and now you have a new owner of the material to deal with.

I use a good entertainment lawyer thats well recognized internationally and had him draw up all my releases and other contracts that are standard for use and it only cost me about $350.00. This is money that is well spent and that I can use over and over. Good luck, but get a contract!
 
Good point Michael...no matter the situation, always good to cover your bases from a legal point of view.
 
"505Angel]sup guys!

how do you use comercial music like rage against the machine to soudtrack your movie? I have heard a few things in tid bits and "i thinks" about BMI and ASCAP and mechanichal royalties..."

You need synchronization rights and it's going to be pricey.

"I wanted to make my movie "for promotional use only" and just have it be free, just making this thing to learn and grow personally and wanted people to be able to see a flick for free- on me..."

Makes no difference if it's for free, non profit etc.


"this thing is comming out a good stride better than expected and everyone involved is feeling it package worthy. I got 2 g's to package up a 1000 copies on my own no prob there.... make a long question short:

for promotional use: how do you handle using peoples music?"

As above makes no difference you need the same rights, they are not likely to be cheap. And because of sites like "YouTume" and folks using all kinds of music illegally the music industry is getting very aggressive.

"for a movie to me retailed: how do you handle using peoples music?"

Above

"can I have a free version on the web and a buy version both, and work it out to use peoples music? "

Yes but you need to buy the rights, otherwise no.

"can you use the "compalation promo" clause I have heard of for anything here?"

clause of what? Basically no. There is no way, legally, around buying rights to music you want to use in a film.
 
ok weel that sucks, someone told me it was a little easier that you would just be able to pay some sort of standardized fee to ascap or somthing like that.

Someone else told me if you re-mix there music and put a "for promo use only" label on it that you could fall it under some sort of promotional skill showing clause of somekind. Dj's do it all the time with mix tapes. They also do the whole mechanical royalty or ascap thing with the CD's they sell. I have seen promotional videos for clubs too that feature all sorts of peoples music being played, including madonnas.

what is the deal.

everything else here is bad news...thanks for the input though. If you are not making any money why do you have to pay them? you are not selling there stuff only showing off your "remixing abnilities" it sounded like there might be something they are standing on here (those that put out these promotional discs) ..

again thanks a ton for the input.
 
Basically they haven't been caught yet. Why are you making the film? If it's for laughs for friends and you are never going to show it to anyone you don't know, it's not legal but your odds of getting caught are very small and you may not be worth going after. But if this is a promo for you then you are making, or trying to make, money based on the film, so it is for profit. But as I said there is no non profit exemption and if there was you would have to be a "non profit" to get it. That requires a lot of expense and paperwork. You have to remember that many big budget films don't make a "profit" because of hollywoods obtuse accounting so they should never have to pay anyone if profit were involved. There are a number of threads on music rights. Some here in the audio section and also on Digidesign's User forum. But the bottom line is if it was written after 1923 it's covered by copyright. Nothing new will go out of copyright till something like 2028. If it's a commercial recording it's hard to get the rights, and often expensive. Even if you can afford it there is no guarantee that they will give you the rights. Jim Cameron wanted to use Inya (I probably misspelled that) for Titanic. But he talked about it before he had a deal and it pissed her off so he couldn't get the rights. Of course he could pay to have a sound alike made but still...

There is a lot of music that you can get the rights to. Local bands are a great source, also there is a bunch of music that is released under the creative commons license that you can use for a credit and there is lots of production music out there some very good.

It's sort of funny because Madonna for some reason gets put in (and then forcibly removed) from a number of low budget films (I know of at least three that thought it would be no problem...ooops).
 
I have done 4 films so far this year. All of the music was custom produced to match the film by a composer trained and skilled at producing music for film. Most commercially produced music is over produced for most pictures except for mabye the credits. Even big budget films that do use commercially made music, only use a portion of the song for the same reason. Generally, a skilled composer can produce the entire films track for less than you could license part of one song. And you now own the music and all rights if properly negotiated. Now you can use the film where needed. Films for promotional purpose will usually need to be entered in festivals where you must show ownership of the rights.
 
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