Using music in our videos...copyright question

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mrjenkins44

Member
I want to use a song in a video I am doing. It is a short, maybe 4 minute long video. There is no way for me to make money on this video and it is not for sale. I have no sponsors. I am just a indy filmmaker, learning the craft.

If I choose to put a song from an artist in my video and I upload it to You Tube, can it be taken down? How can I host the video (and where) so that people can still see it, without it being taken down?
 
Sure, it can be taken down if the copyright holder wants it taken down. Any public display is an infringement; making money on it or not doesn't matter.
 
mrjenkins44 said:
I want to use a song in a video I am doing. It is a short, maybe 4 minute long video. There is no way for me to make money on this video and it is not for sale. I have no sponsors. I am just a indy filmmaker, learning the craft.

If I choose to put a song from an artist in my video and I upload it to You Tube, can it be taken down? How can I host the video (and where) so that people can still see it, without it being taken down?
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As David said, any usage requires permission from the copyright owner, no matter how brief and irrespective of whether it's for profit or not. Surprisely that does not necessarily mean the recording artist. Use of an existing recording in a film or video intended for public viewing actually requires TWO licenses, a so-called Synchronization license from the owner of the copyright to the words and melody, thus the composer and lyricist as represented by their publisher, and a Master Use license for the actual recording you want to use, normally obtained from the record label that released it. Permission of the artist, unless he actually wrote the music and self-published and also is his own recording label, doesn't usually count for anything. Even top name performers are just hired help working for the record label where copyright ownership is concerned.
 
mrjenkins44 said:
LOL that is very lame. Is it hard to get permission? Has anyone here ever tried, like on a famous song?
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There's no pat answer to that and if you're just posting on YouTube it may not be worth your while ... forget popular music and just purchase royalty-free library tracks instead. You need to identify the publisher of the song , usually not too hard to do, both ASCAP and the Harry Fox Agency have free searchable databases online, and contact their rights clearance department. They may grant a license for free or more likely they will want you to pay a fee which could range anywhere from a nominal amount like $100 up into the tens of thousands of dollars - the sky's the limit, it depnds on how famous/popular the song is and what you want to do with it. They may turn down your request flat out or they may just ignore your email and phone calls all together. If you do succeed in getting a license from the publisher you're still not out of the woods - the sync license lets you use the words and music but we're talking sheet music here, not a recording. With just the sync license you'll need to make a new recording, either performing the music yourself or hiring musicians etc to play it. So the next step is to track down the label that released the specific recording you want to use - back to the ASCAP database or if you have a CD around that's often in the fine print on the liner material - and contract THEIR rights clearance department at go through the whole process again with them, again paying whatever fee THEY request (if they respond to your email at all).

After reading this, if you still want to try to get permission to use whatever song it is that you have in mind, you might want to track down a music rights clearance agent. Google will turn up a number of them. These are people who, for a fee, make it a business to track down and secure licenses for program producers. They know who to call and can often secure the licenses faster and at a lower cost than you would be able to do it yourself, even after adding their fee on top of the license fee.

Has anyone ever tried? Of course. Indy filmmakers do it all the time - you can't submit films to festivals or for broadcast without having all the license ducks in line.
 
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Thank you. That helped ALOT. I will do that.

What about remixes? Like if I use a remix of a famous song that someone made on You Tube? Do I have to get permission from everyone or just the person who made the remix?
 
mrjenkins44 said:
Thank you. That helped ALOT. I will do that.

What about remixes? Like if I use a remix of a famous song that someone made on You Tube? Do I have to get permission from everyone or just the person who made the remix?
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AFAIK, it doesn't make any difference if it's a remix or not ... you need clearance from all copyright owners on any recognizable music. That's really a question for an IP attorney, which I am not.
 
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