I want to use a commercial piece of music for a corportate, promotional DVD, a well known, new music track called:

FIX YOU by ColdPlay

How do I go about getting a license to be able to use this, and to use it for roughly 30 DVD copies - NOT to Sell.

Are there speical companies I need to get in contact with, if so, who are they?

Will it be expensive? etc??

Can anyone help me out please as I am new to this music copyright ordeal!

Ant from UK.
Thanks guys.

You'll need to get in touch with the publisher - see the CD inlay for details. I would say it's going to be EXTREMELY expensive! I don't know your budget and I don't want to sound negative but for 30 copies I wouldn't even bother attempting it. Find some Royalty Free music.

If you're picking a song primarily for the vibe, maybe you can find a musician to match it. Imagine it would be much cheaper as well.

I picture a particular song playing at the end of a movie I'd like to do, but the licensing fees probably wouldn't be realistic for me. So I'd just have to record a little song that has the same vibe.

Yea good point!!
I thought it wud be expensive!! Its just a shame copyright free music sound crap!!!!!

Does anyone know a selection of mixed CDs that is any good?

Cheers guys
Ant

Try to find some mp3-demo sites on the net. mp3.com used to be it but it seems that they have gone way commercial now. I think that most of the music magazines have regular submit your demo articles and you can find good quality songs there. It just takes time to listen through them all.

Thank you for that.
But where wud I stand on copyright?

Thank you for that.
But where wud I stand on copyright?
Oh, sorry... then contact the band say you want to pay x money for the right to use it on x amount of DVDs. Make sure you type up a contract to. Maybe even make a deal that you can print more DVDs and then pay them depending on how many DVDs you make.

And as mentioned you can also pay a musician to do a track for you. I know a guy who did jingles to telephone hotlines. He made about 50 or 100 euro per jingle, one took about 20 minutes to make. This was keyboards. Guitars, drums et c will of course require more recording time.

BTW if the company is BIG you can of course experience positive branding by being associated with a rock group. Microsoft being associated with Rolling Stones on the Windows 95 launch "start me up". But that is definately 5 to 7 figures.

I never answered about copyright... if you pay the musician to make a song you don't have to pay any royalty for using it in your products (you buy the rights to use it at a flat rate). However if it's broadcasted the musician makes a small amount of money that the radiostation, tv-company et c has to pay. If you are having a commercial this is probably included in the fee. You might also make a contract where the musician abandon all echonomical rights. You can never loose your copyright, it belongs to he/she who make it. But the echonomical rights is a completely different thing.

Thanks for your help guys :)

This is discussed often in the Taking Care of Business section of the board. Basically, you will need a Master Use license from the label for the song and Synchronization rights for the publisher who handles it for the song writer. Check out some of the threads in the other forum.

Thanks :) ......