how much you think he paid for royalty?

I don't think he had to pay any money.

It's his own music. That's why you record your own songs for movies even if they are covers of songs because you can get royalty to them without paying a cent.

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong because I thought that's the way it went.
 
-zach- said:
I don't think he had to pay any money.

It's his own music. That's why you record your own songs for movies even if they are covers of songs because you can get royalty to them without paying a cent.

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong because I thought that's the way it went.
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Sync rights are the copyright-holder's. Mechanical reproduction rights are the publisher's.

So. You recorded your version of the song....you pay yourself mechanical rights.

But the songwriter still has Sync say. Gotta ask permission/pay money.
 
And, what pisses me off, is the whole "sync" thing.

You can reproduce the song all day long, make albums, get radio play, whatever...without asking permission first. (You still pay, but it's a compulsory license...they can't say No.)

But reproduce it on film....Bzzzzzzzzz!

What kind of sense does that make?

Maybe in the olden days, the book-keeping sucked and there was no way of knowing how many times it was "performed", so the royalties were difficult to calculate, but now? Pfffft. The know (or can know) exactly how many times a film is shown, even if web-delivered. Even if sold on a DVD.

Sync rights should be meaningless.

(And the argument that the author should be able to determine who can and cannot use their work in a film...a KKK-sponsored film, for instance, which is the argument I often hear...is nonsense. Someone can make a KKK CD, or play it on a KKK radio station, or whatever. How is a film any different?)
 
Barry_Green said:
Exactly -- you'd have to pay royalties to use the underlying musical composition (i.e., the "sheet music").
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Where is the line drawn? If you change one note of the melody? Two notes? Three? As a musician, I've always wondered this. The songs in the link are obviously spoofs of the original versions, but what if he had taken a song in D major and played in D minor instead? How much does a song need to be changed before it would be clasified as an original work? The line seems like it's very vague. Especially in rock music, where most songs are made up of power chords, and a lot of the worse songs sound very similar.
 
GenJerDan said:
But reproduce it on film....Bzzzzzzzzz!

What kind of sense does that make?
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Makes perfect sense, actually. Because in all the other instances you're talking about using the artistic work as a standalone, not associating it with anything else. But once you associate it with your film, there are other images that become attached to that song, which could actually do harm to the song.

An example would be when Preparation H wanted to use the Johnny Cash song "Ring of Fire". Let's just say that the Cash estate was none too pleased, and vetoed it. As they should. The song would be forever tainted and bring up images of flaming anuses whenever it was played.

How would you like it if you were a musical artist, created some "uplifting" composition, and then Tarantino used it without your permission in something that looks like a snuff film? So that whenever people heard your song they'd think about ears being sliced off or something? Might destroy your entire artistic intent in producing the work, wouldn't you say?

That said, the parody rules do give you certain freedom to mock or mimic copyrighted work, but as for just wholesale using of someone else's work for your own purposes (taking someone else's popular song and using it in your film, for example): no, that's a protected right of the original author, and there are many reasons why that's exactly the way it should be.
 
Duff said:
Where is the line drawn? If you change one note of the melody? Two notes? Three? As a musician, I've always wondered this. The songs in the link are obviously spoofs of the original versions, but what if he had taken a song in D major and played in D minor instead? How much does a song need to be changed before it would be clasified as an original work? The line seems like it's very vague. Especially in rock music, where most songs are made up of power chords, and a lot of the worse songs sound very similar.
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"Substantial similarity." There's no mathematical formula.
 
That's the dumbest **** I have ever heard.

Damn Weird Al for inspiring this twit to make really bad music. People like this stuff ?
 
Barry_Green said:
An example would be when Preparation H wanted to use the Johnny Cash song "Ring of Fire". Let's just say that the Cash estate was none too pleased, and vetoed it. As they should. The song would be forever tainted and bring up images of flaming anuses whenever it was played.
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But it already is.

Just like I always associate the Temps' "My Girl" with "Midol", and Diamond's "Song Sung Blue" with "Selsun Blue" dandruff shampoo. :)

Given, though. Using a song in a commercial could have that effect, but that's more a matter of bombardment than anything else. You see/hear it 2000 times, the association could be made.

But a film you'll see once, twice?

How many people associate Immigrant Song with School of Rock? Even after seeing the film maybe three times now, I can't picture the scene. Even knowing what scene it was, I can't picture it. And certainly don't form any real association.

Hell, I don't even associate Beethoven with Clockwork Orange, and they made a determined point of the music in that.
 
I associate The Ride of the Valkyries with Apocalypse Now.

EDIT: Along those lines I had a terrible association idea between using Sinatra's Most Wonderful Time of the Year in a tampon commercial. I would change year to month. That's a lawsuit waiting to happen...
 
Yeah it's kinda like that one song in WHITE CHICS...

"makin my way downtown.."

I can't hear that song without thinking of that really buff actor singing it on cue and accurately; albeit prettily, as well.
 
David Jimerson said:
"Substantial similarity." There's no mathematical formula.
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For clarification
Hypothetically, for my film, If I take "Time After Time" and up the key about 3 octaves and have 3 girls sing it a cappella and it gets into Sundance... am I going to be paying thousands of dollars for sync rights or what?
 
You will need to secure two types of rights -- the rights for the composition (the lyrics, in your case) and then the rights to sync that recording with your picture. If you happen to be the one recording them, and you've signed them all to a work-for-hire agreement, then you may only have to pay for the lyrics. But yes, you will owe for the lyrics, even if there's no music and even if it's your own performance.

Of course, you may just send a letter to Cyndi Lauper and Rob Hyman and ask them for permission; they may grant it to you for free. And that'd be all the permission you need, seeing as you'd have your own performance and wouldn't need the sheet music. But you would also need permission from the girls you hired to sing it.

Bottom line is: you can't take someone else's work and do whatever you want with it. You can't just "change it 10%" or some arbitrary rule either. And as you make more content you'll find those rules working in your favor too.
 
Great. That actually really helps with what I was trying to understand.

The fact that there isn't just a plain rule like "This is how to change the music to be completely yours" is actually fair. It makes sense.
 
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