Music rights

G

Gestahl

Active member
Hey!

My friend just produced a short 4 minutes movie that he would like to use in a film festival in Sweden. It's a nonprofit festival, but the thing is that he doesn't have the rights to use the music. The music is created by Jason Mraz and I was just wondering if there is someone who could help me out here. Is there any chance at all that a star like Jason Mraz would give permission for free if he would like the shortfilm and when it's nonprofit involved? And also. Is there anyone who got experience in this kind of matter who could guide me in how to contact him?

Best regards
Andreas Sjöberg
 
It's not unheard of for musicians to give the rights to something, particularly if it is non-commercial. I seem to recall Mellencamp doing that at some point. Of course, there's also the question of if Mraz actually is the one who controls the rights to his music. Your best bet is to try to contact him directly, though the only option may be to try to contact him through his label. You might try sending them a copy of the film, and mention what it is about and why the piece is important to the short.
 
Tell your friend that his BEST bet is to re-score the movie. It's just asking for trouble to use unlicensed music when you edit your project, because if the cuts go to music, and the music is not yours - you will not only be ensuring your film won't be seen, but when you do want to change the music to something legal your cuts won't match because they were originally done to different music. It's a slippery slope, and IMO it's lazy film making. You want to use someone's hard work to benefit your work, but you don't want to compensate them? Hey that would be win win for you and lose lose for them. Keep repeating the phrase "All Original" to yourself and just try to be cool in the future.

That being said, I just lost a video competition to a guy who used Dave Mathews music illegally as the score for his film. The judges didn't even notice, ant they didn't care when I mentioned it to them even though it was in the rules of the contest. And I spent a lot of time scoring my own video! But hey I can legally use my video anywhere now. The guy with Dave M as his soundtrack can't use his work for anything real. He can't post it on Vimeo even.

I know this isn't what you want to hear. You just want someone to give you Jason's number and maybe Jason will say "Sure bro! Use my music!" but really that's not going to happen. Your friend should take his film out of the fest on principle and try to do better next time around. Or get a musician he actually knows to donate his music to the project.
 
If you look on the cd or album you took the music off of, it should tell you who owns the music. In a legit world, you would have to pay for performance AND publishing = you're paying to use his performance of the song, and the song itself. The record label usually owns the performance, and a publishing company like EMI usually owns the publishing.
 
Jason Mraz may own the rights to the song itself (though I would assume the publishing company he's with handles those matters) - however since he is signed to Atlantic Records, I'm going to assume that the record company owns the recording itself, as Rweibush pointed out.

http://www.atlanticrecords.com/contact

Contact them first - and see what they say.

Having said all that, why use a Jason Mraz song in a short film? We've all heard Jason Mraz. Why not find some independant artist? Music can do a lot for a film, and if it's music people haven't heard (or at least an artist that hasn't been force fed into the public eye), it will make things more interesting. Gone are the days of "Your friends band sucks, don't use them" -- because there really are a number of fantastic under the radar bands that will give you music for free. It just takes time to find them.
 
cranston said:
Use a Prince song. When your friend gets sued, he'll get a lot of media attention.
Click to expand...

lol... one must weigh the odds.

But really - you probably have a LOT of artists right in your area that would love to be part of your video. You always can browse myspace music (and others) and contact any artists you like - had success with that too!
 
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