MUSIC licensing, getting sued.

pest22o

pest22o

Well-known member
I'm making a film and I want to use some songs from other films it's nothing I intend on selling or distributing. sort of just wanna post it on youtube for fun can I get in trouble for that? In no way is this for profit it's just some stupid movie about a cardboard box that come sto life and starts killing off the eccentric employees of a hollywood video store. Can I get sued even though I'm just doing it for fun?
 
If you're worried about it why do it? If it's for fun, why not use some royalty free music?

That's like saying it's ok to steal a Ferrari because you just wanted to drive it for the fun of it. Wasn't going to sell it or anything, just wanted to feel what 140mph felt like. So that would be ok too?
 
its not like stealing at all - it IS stealing. you dont have the rights for internet distribution, yet you intend to distribute the song on the internet. Those are stolen rights. Your film also benefits from the song (as you said it fits so right). Get the rights if its that good of a fit. There's lots of good royalty free music and lots of indie bands and composers out there too.
 
I'm still on the fence over the Ferrari. Maybe if you were a valet and the lot was full and you went on a search for remote parking... in the next county.

On the matter of the music. It's stealing - regardless of what your return on the crime is.

e
 
alright alright. now how do you go about getting rights to music is it hard is it expensive? remember this isnt an independent film or low budget it's just me testing out my camera for the first time.
 
if I remember right, many use Harry Fox to obtain rights. Its not cheap! For testing a camera I wouldnt do it - just get some royalty free music. If the music ruins the piece then perhaps you have some more work to do :)
 
thanks. I m really pissed Edward Shermur's opening track for
K-pax would have been great. who's Harry Fox?
 
thanks for the link, what if they dont have the song I want? where else can you get it from?
 
ascap, bmi... start at the record company and get the master use rights and then get sync rights from ascap, bmi, etc. Record company can probably let you know where/how to get sync rights. Just looked at Harry Fox and they dont do sync rights anymore, so scratch that one.
 
Another route is to see if you can find a composer in your area that could do something in the same vein as the song you're looking at.

I started to put together a bunch of footage to an Enya track. And like your project, it fit so well. Well, I knew there would be no way I could affords to license an Enya track so I stopped cutting because I knew it would be "perfect" and there would be nothing I could do with it.

So, now I use licensed music to even cut a temp track cause there's nothing worse then finding the perfect music and then realizing you can't ever use it for anything.
 
For anyone else out there who is inquiring about using copyrighted material for their project with out gaining permission, even if you intend to just show it on a format like YouTube here is something that you should know:

A friend mine who works in the music industry had one of his songs used in an online movie and showed on YouTube without his permission. He contacted the person that made the movie and told him that he should pay him for his song and the producer told him to eff off.
My friend got a lawyer and the producer of the movie ended up having to pay $5000 for the use of the song and $5000 for distributing it without written consent.

Something to think about...
 
wow that incompetech has some great stuff - thanks Andy! Just found a piece to use for a show I'm working on. Yay for free stuff. Now I can afford to get a second topping on all the pizzas!
 
Even if it's youtube, you'd be amazed. License yourself some music.

(in my early years of making random stuff, my friends and I wanted to make a "movie" to see what we were capable of. It turned out (what we thought at the time to be) pretty awesome, and we decided since we were only doing it for fun that we'd use whatever music we wanted to to make the right impact, but never release the thing, even on some service like youtube. Now since I'm older and wiser, I'm glad we didn't, cause our glorified home movie really sucks :D)
 
Good information to know about putting movies on Youtube. I made a few small bicycle videos and couldn't find any royalty free music that I felt matched the tempo. So I used some songs I had on my computer but now should have used something licensed.

The big fault on my part is I edited my video to the music and now will have to edit the movie over again to match the new music. Lesson learned.

Rob
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top