So here's the deal... I am the general manager of a night club and want to video record one of our acoustic jams. These include 5-6 artists performing acousticly for about 90-120 minutes, song swapping and the likes. I would like to compile a DVD to sell to our customers from these video recordings. I've searched the forums and looked at a few different forms, but I'm not sure if they fit my situation. The artists will sing mostly original songs, but I'm sure they will sing a few cover songs. If they sing cover songs I can just edit those out of the video so I don't have to worry about getting copyright approval from the original artists, etc. I need a form that the artists sign that give me rights to sell their material, in which they would receive no benefites from other than advertisement of their name and music. They do get paid for the acoustic performance the night of, which is a flat rate per artist, if that matters. I need it to also protect our company from any legal matters in the future. I am very new to all of this, so any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks a ton in advance!!

Texas Accountants and Lawyers for the Arts can help you find an Entertainment Attorney. I think they are located on Montrose.

Basically, you are looking for a 'limited' distribution license for their performances. They are not going to want to sign over all the rights to original material.

I've already talked to all of their agents and they all have agreed that signing would not be a problem. These artists are still at the level to where they care more about the advertisement than the monetary rewards.