Legalities of use of music in wedding videos

[Mike Teutsch]

Originally Posted by Jimmy McKenzie

The trickle down element has landed here from the beaurocrats in Ottawa who skim a fee from every piece of blank media sold at retail to recompense the authors of musical works in a purely knee-jerk reaction sort of way as an answer to the proliferation of peer to peer file sharers. So I pay musicians a fee every time I produce my creations and burn 'em to disk. Fair? Where's my dispursement as an artist!

Will you see a retail style clearing house for one time use, not for broadcast sync to video licensing for the little guys? Not anytime soon. The rights holders (publishers) just aren't set up for it, nor do their philosophies subscribe to it.

2 options exist.

1. Tread carefully and stay below the radar as you quietly eek out a living by using music tracks without paperwork as described above, and your clients will never need to hear your dissertation of copyright etc.

---or---

2. Get really good at your abstract non ceremony park,hotel,parking lot,drunk guest impromptu acts of bravery camera work and make kick ass reels that allow the use of royalty free, no needle drop fee music beds.

I use option 2.

This what we are proposing to change. Let's not give in yet!

Your Options one and two are not any solution at all. How about option three: pay a resonable fee for the use of the music you want and that's it!

That is what this thread is all about!


Thanks Jimmy,

Mike

[Mike Teutsch]

Originally Posted by Peter Jefferson

well for some reason, my detailed post about licensing coywritten material (audibly and mechanically) seems to be lost.
head off to http://www.apra.com.au/music-users/a...t_licences.asp

for info on how it works

Thanks Peter! I had not seen this post yet. Not sure that I fully understand it yet, but I bookmarked it and will read and re-read. Perhaps someone who uses this system on a regular basis will help us decipher it. You know, referance wedding videos, promos, etc.

Mike

[Steve House]

Originally Posted by Brent Warwick

But that's almost exactly what ASCAP and BMI do. Remember it's not just the artist that owns the property, but also the publisher. While either/both could elect not to have the song belong to the ASCAP or BMI catalogs, once they agree to license it to either of those organizations, they give up the stipulations under which that song can be played. They lose control of their own property in a sense.

That may be true, but it's still a far cry from a law that compels a copyright holder to license his property if he does not wish to do so. Songs don't just automatically come under BMI or ASCAP jurisdiction when published or recorded. The owner of the song, whether it's the artist or the publisher or my old aunt Grundy who inherited the rights from her composer father, must give the clearance house the authority to license it out on their behalf. Their contract with BMI or ASCAP may include terms that limits their right to control who the clearance house licenses the work to but that again is purely a matter of the contractual relationship between the copyright owner and his licensing agent and not a matter of legislated law.

[Steve House]

Originally Posted by Mike Teutsch

This what we are proposing to change. Let's not give in yet!

Your Options one and two are not any solution at all. How about option three: pay a resonable fee for the use of the music you want and that's it!

That is what this thread is all about!


Thanks Jimmy,

Mike

It would be great if we could and there's nothing stopping the present clearance houses from offering such licenses literally starting first thing next Monday morning (give 'em a couple of days to design the forms and post them on their web sites). How complicated can it be to set up a system where we submit a cue sheet and pay some reasonable rate for each song used in a non-broadcast, non-public-performance, not-for-public-retail-sale production, with a rate based on the use and size of the duplication run. After all, they can manage it now for performance clearances for every mom-and-pop karayoke bar, neighborhood pub juke box, and school play and band performace so it's not like a system for handling the paperwork isn't already in place. But other than using the power of persuasion and lobbying the present rights holders and clearance houses and showing them how it's in their self-interest to do it, I don't see how we could have a leg to stand on. AFAIK, its just not something that could be imposed by legislative fiat any more than the government can come along and tell you you have to sell your car to the kid down the block who wants it. We want it and we have really good reasons for wanting it but that doesn't allow the law to force the owners to let us use what is still their private property.

[Brent Warwick]

I agree with you Steve in that it will never come to a mandatory licensing of an artist's work. The artist/publisher will (and I think they should!) retain control of how their work is used. The can choose to have it in the ASCAP/BMI catalogs, and they should be able to choose whether it's in the sync catalog or not. I hope my points didn't suggest we should force the issue on an artist.

My point is simple: If you're standing in the middle of nowhere and someone walks up to you and says, "You can stand here and not get paid or you can stand here and take this money." Either way you're standing. Why not get paid? The choice is obvious. It's simply another avenue for an artist to make some cash.

Or you could look at it like the RIAA did. People were rampantly stealing music online. So the RIAA fought and fought and fought, with little avail. I'm sure tons of money was spent on legal recourse to try and stop the downloaders. Did it work? Nah. Might have made a small dent, but that's even debatable. So what did they do instead? They said, "Fine, you don't have to pay $18 for a CD. We'll let you buy a song for $0.99." Given the choice to make no money (actually spend tons on legal fees), or make some money by opening a new revenue stream, they chose the latter.

The same is true about the system we're proposing.

[Chris Hurd]

Hi Steve,

Originally Posted by Steve House

it's still a far cry from a law that compels a copyright holder to license his property if he does not wish to do so.

I think this is the second or third time you've mentioned the spectre of compulsory licensing, and I think it's time we buried this fear. I don't think anybody here is miltant enough to advocate such a thing (at least I sure hope not). The proposals discussed here are all about easing the clearance process, and I think we can assume that this would be limited only to those copyright holders who support such a thing and wouldn't mind earning those additional royalties. In other words, let's assume from this point forward that we're talking only about a revised copyright / licensing structure that begins with an opt-in from the original copyright holder; in this way we can put behind us the ludicrous notion of mandatory licensing. Let's all agree that we're limiting this discussion to the assumption of an opt-in by the original artists, ala "American Idol." If it's a Top 40 hit that is commonly cleared for a variety of other venues, then there should be a "wedding video" option there as well. I believe if you poll most popular music artists these days, they would probably support such a thing. Let's say we're discussing this revised structure which would apply *only* to those artists who approve it, so that we don't have to travel down that ugly mandatory / compulsory road again. Thanks in advance,

[Steve House]

Originally Posted by Brent Warwick

...
My point is simple: If you're standing in the middle of nowhere and someone walks up to you and says, "You can stand here and not get paid or you can stand here and take this money." Either way you're standing. Why not get paid? The choice is obvious. It's simply another avenue for an artist to make some cash.

...

Yep, makes perfect sense to me - and so we need to start lobbying intently with the clearance houses to start up such a licensing program. If I could get a one-time-use license for $10 to $50 to use the theme to Titanic in up to 5 copies of a wedding video that's not going to be licensed for broadcast or sold to the general public, I'd be more than happy to pay up and then build the cost into my rate structure. I can see saying to a client "Yes, we're glad to use your choice of music but if you want songs off of XYZ's CD there'll be an additional charge of $25 per song to cover the royalties to the copyright holders" and I doubt there would be much customer resistance. (If the license fee was $1000 it would be another story.) My point is that lobbying the government to change the copyright laws won't accomplish anything because the present lack of such licensing is not a consequence of the current copyright laws in the first place.

[Peter Jefferson]

umm.. well i put up a post in the wedding/events forum about the licensing and use of this copywritten material.

The link i sent gives a rundown of how it works, its not all that technical, however the fact that it covers the "mechanical" use of said music allows me to use with a piece of video in sync (this si a new thing, in the past this didnt exist).
The payment i make to the licensing body covers the artist/publishers "fees"

The model there is a good one however. If you do want totake it further, get in touch with AMCOS and ask them whether they have considered going international.
The only way to find out is to ask..

[Steve House]

Originally Posted by Peter Jefferson

umm.. well i put up a post in the wedding/events forum about the licensing and use of this copywritten material.

The link i sent gives a rundown of how it works, its not all that technical, however the fact that it covers the "mechanical" use of said music allows me to use with a piece of video in sync (this si a new thing, in the past this didnt exist).
The payment i make to the licensing body covers the artist/publishers "fees"

The model there is a good one however. If you do want totake it further, get in touch with AMCOS and ask them whether they have considered going international.
The only way to find out is to ask..

I wonder - does this mechanism you have in Oz apply only to music published in Australia or does it also apply to works that would be "foreign" from your point of view? Could you, for example, use a song off of Celine Dion's last CD to be released in the USA under the same rules as you could the work of a local Australian performer? If so, that leads to another speculation - if an American shooter were to incorporate in Australia, would they be able to license works from American copyright holders through the Australian system and then sell the product to an American client? A lot of corporations incorporate "offshore" to take advantage of tax laws and so forth, I wonder if the same mechanism might work here. Heck, about half of the world's merchant ships are registered in Liberia and that country doesn't even have a seaport of any consequence!

[Dylan Couper]

Since this thread has evolved so much, I'm changing the title.

[Peter Jefferson]

Originally Posted by Steve House

I wonder - does this mechanism you have in Oz apply only to music published in Australia or does it also apply to works that would be "foreign" from your point of view? Could you, for example, use a song off of Celine Dion's last CD to be released in the USA under the same rules as you could the work of a local Australian performer? If so, that leads to another speculation - if an American shooter were to incorporate in Australia, would they be able to license works from American copyright holders through the Australian system and then sell the product to an American client? A lot of corporations incorporate "offshore" to take advantage of tax laws and so forth, I wonder if the same mechanism might work here. Heck, about half of the world's merchant ships are registered in Liberia and that country doesn't even have a seaport of any consequence!

basically yup..
Irrespective of the music's point of origin, the fact that it is sold to, then registered (for protection) by the buyer/publisher, means that it is then protected under the australian laws, therefore, as most, if not all publishers/distributors here are registered with AMCOS (theyd be silly not to be) would then fall under the licensing umbrella. did that make any sense?? LOL

[Steve House]

Originally Posted by Chris Hurd

Hi Steve,I think this is the second or third time you've mentioned the spectre of compulsory licensing, and I think it's time we buried this fear. I don't think anybody here is miltant enough to advocate such a thing

Not directly, but people have implied that a change in the copyright law is needed to create such a license or to allow such a license. I'm trying to point out that there's nothing in the present law that prevents such a system and so the only thing a change in the law could do that the present laws don't already allow is to make it mandatory that such licenses be offered.

A wedding videographer right now can obtain a license to use any piece of music he wishes, as long as the rights holder is willing to license it. It appears to me that the issue is whether one can get a blanket license for some reasonable amount for a small business owner to pay - say, $500 per year - that allows them a limited license to use any BMI or ASCAP tune or continue on with the present system that requires you to negotiate synchronization rights on a tune-by-tune basis directly with the copyright owner and perhaps pay many thousands of dollars to use one single cut of popluar music or a hundred bucks or so to use "Happy Birthday." There's nothing in the law right now stopping you from legally using "Nessun Dorma" sung by Sarah Brightman if you wish, it's merely going to be very, very expensive to legally do so. All you have to do is have your lawyer call her lawyer <grin>.

[Richard Alvarez]

This is a good thread on a reasonable premise. That 'small guys' like wedding and event photographers, should have the same ability to use great music just like the 'big guys' do, at a much much MUCH reduced rate, because fewer people are going to see it. Right? I mean, I'm just trying to see how the arguement is put forth to the publishing companies.

You can license "We've Only Just Begun" once for thirty thousand dollars to a film company for the use in the new romantic comedy. AND/OR you can license it for thirty dollars to a thousand wedding videographers"... that's the line of reasoning, right? It would be an AND not an OR, right? I mean, the film companies aren't going to turn around and say to the publishing companies and artists... "Hey, why should I pay you 30 grand, when the guy down the street pays you thirty bucks... you're crazy" The licensing agency and artist wouldn't be LOSING the thirty grand sale, right?

That's what I think the industry might be afraid of. Not saying it's a reasonable fear... just saying that might come into the arguement. Got to look at all angles if you want to go forward, and I think it's worth going forward.

I was watching the movie "My Favorite Year" the other day, with the director's commentary running. The director, Richard Benjamin, commented during the opening credits how they came to chose Nat King Cole's rendition of "Stardust" for the credits. He made the comment "Of course, you couldn't afford it nowadays..." and a similar comment later in the film about another piece of music. Nora Ephron chose to use all those classic love standards in "Sleepless in Seattle" because they were cheaper than the modern love standards. She revolutionized the industry. Now OLDIES are worth as much as new tunes. Even Lucas complained that a third of his budget on "AMerican Graffitti" was music rights. It has not ALWAYS been expensive to license music, and it's always been a sliding scale to get a piece of music, based on it's (and the artists's) popularity.

My point being... I think the industry WANTS to be able to negotiate the price one piece at a time, instead of giving someone, anyone a 'blanket' fee to get any piece on a list. Remember. The model everyone is quoting as a license fee in America is not synchronization rights... it's playing/broadcasting rights. ONce the song goes out on the radio... it's gone. Once its' synched to the movie... it's permanent.

I think the Australian model is a good one to look at and put forth. It's just an application of the current "needle drop" and "royalty free" type of model that we subscribe to now, applied to the most popular and valuable music in America, right? Who could argue against that?

[Steve House]

Originally Posted by Richard Alvarez

I think the Australian model is a good one to look at and put forth. It's just an application of the current "needle drop" and "royalty free" type of model that we subscribe to now, applied to the most popular and valuable music in America, right? Who could argue against that?

I agree - in terms of the monetary value the music contributes to the product it's being used in and the number of "listens" it's going to get, I think it could be reasonably argued that the license to use song XYZ in a wedding or event video is worth far less than a performance license for the same song to a radio station or your corner bar and would not result in market saturation. After all, once the honeymoon's over and the novelty wears off how many times will the video get shown? One could argue that the music is an audience draw for a theatrical release but how many people watch John and Mary's wedding for the music? So how can we present that to the clearance houses to motivate them to get off their duff and offer it?

[Brent Warwick]

ASCAP and BMI already operate under that very premise. If you're a niteclub, your annual rate is X. If you're a radio station, it's Y. If your a dance studio, it's Z. Dance studios for example would be allowed to produce three paid shows per year using copyrighted music, as long as the attendance was less than a specified number. If the needs of the studio exceed that, they're given a greater rate.

The same must apply to sync licenses. If you're a wedding videographer, you're allowed to use up to X songs in a video, limited to Y copies made of each video with annual sales less than Z. Dance recitals would be interesting: as many as 40 copyrighted songs in one show and sold to about 50-100 people. Different rate? It would take some time to hammer out the details, but if it was based on the existing ASCAP/BMI and the Australian sync license methods, it could work.