What to do about song rights

[Chip Thome]

Dylan...the answer to your question is:

IT'S AS ILLEGAL AS HELL....DON'T DO IT!.

For the reality of the situation, reread John's posts.

As far as the situation of licensing ever changing, one has to step back and look at the big picture. That picture has one industry currently doing BILLIONS of dollars in sales each year without selling broadcast or duplication rights to videographers. The other industry, the wedding video industry is miniscule in comparison. If we were to take a educated guess, there's maybe 50,000 wedding video produced here in the states each year ??? Hell, let's double that, 100,000 done in the US every year. How much are wedding videographers going to pay for rights to music for each of those weddings, $100 maybe ??? That's ten million dollars which seriously, is just a drop in the ocean of the music industry's current sales. If we jump that to $500 per wedding, it's still just fifty million, again, in the big picture, it's chump change to them.

What does the music industry lose bedsides the 50 million ??? The "value" of those hot tunes has now just been diluted as anyone can now put them into any film for the insignificant price of $500. What does the music industry gain, besides 50 million in additional sales??? A huge pain in the ass as they try to license all this stuff to all those people.

Now the government could step in and force something on the music industry. Well they could, right after they fix the national debt, the deficit, the wars and the jobless situation. I expect if we all contact our senators tomorrow this issue will come up on the calendar right around the second week of never.

I and others gave you the answer. John relayed reality. You decide what is best for Dylan and your clients.

Good luck with your decision.

[Nigel Barker]

Chip, those figures are way off for the UK licence scheme. The cost of licensing up to 25 minutes of any musical tracks is just £15.32 (about $25) for up to 5 discs of one production i.e. $5/disc. There is a sliding scale of charges & for up to 250 discs & more than 25 minutes of music it's just over £200/$325 i.e. $1.30/disc Limited Manufacture Licence (LM) However the Limited Manufacture licence is as the name implies limited. It's ideally suited for producing very short run videos of private events e.g. weddings but the value of those hot tunes is not diluted because even if you have some indy short the LM licence cannot be used. It's perfect for wedding videos, dance school videos, school productions even promotional videos by unsigned bands. The biggest limiting factor for us is that it only applies to physical products & there is no simple equivalent for licensing music for online use.

I don't know when this scheme was introduced (perhaps older UK videographers could chip in) but I am pretty sure that the initiative came from MCPS/PRS (UK equivalent of ASCAP/BMI) rather than wedding videographers who don't have any collective voice beyond the Institute of Videography.

[Chris Harding]

Hi Nigel

Remember that the USA doesn't have anything like what the UK/AUS/NZ has so they face the problem of either putting Royalty Free music on the bride's DVD or simply using copyrighted music and hope that someone doesn't knock on your door or the bride's door.

Over here it's around $400 or so for an annual icence which allows you to do multiple weddings and up to 20 disks per bride or you can get a licence for just one event for around $50. That, of course, is only for the bride's DVD's for private viewing and if you host a portion on YouTube or any online site your video is then considered "broadcast" and it's up to you to approach various publishers and pay for copyright, which of course is totally impractical. I actually asked our guys APRA how wedding videographers can still use copyright music on their own website clips here and never had any response so despite the "licence" the music side is still somewhat unregulated.

AFAIK, in the USA using copyrighted music on your video is not permitted without paying for royalties so the bottom line is that no-one does it simply because it's totally impractical...I do believe that Canada has something in place though???

It certainly is a pity that a simple worldwide system couldn't be put in place..gosh, even at a paltry $1 per song the music industry would reap in a huge income!!

Chris

[Paul R Johnson]

I use our Limited Manufacture License quite a bit, but I'm also a member of PRS and PLL here in the UK, and the bizarre thing is that I use the LML for my work with the non-business people, and as a PRS/PPL member of insignificance, I never get a penny for my contribution - even if I use my own music! The system we have allows compliance and legality, but very often doesn't benefit the music copyright holders. So our system isn't that good. Copyright, because it's some magical thing nobody understands won't ever be taken seriously. Even when people try to do it right, they do it wrong.

Maybe I'm the odd one but in business I try to stay on the positive side of the ethics line. Our LTM license doesn't cover business use, so to use Dire Straits in a project is going to cost the client. Quiet a bit, in most cases. All I do with my business clients is offer them the option. Business people at least understand the law when pointed out. Some will wish to avoid the payment, and I do not use copyright music and put it in my projects and avoid payment. As a music producer - it would be hypocritical, wouldn't it? My solution is to offer two solutions, one cheap, the other in-between.

Our UK system (and this is the same in the US, I think) is that we have a copyright in the composition of the music, and a copyright, controlled by a different agency, of the performance. So if we use Dire Straits, we are paying in most cases for the song Mark Knopfler wrote, and then we're paying his record company for him performing it. It's pretty common in broadcast adverts to get the song re-recorded by session paid musicians with a buy out contract, and then only the composer needs paying. This saves quite a bit of money. So I do a fair bit of this for me and other video producers. Pay for the recording musicians is per person. If this is still too much, then I offer the client music in the style of - something vaguely reminding them of a familiar song, but different enough to be a new product. I never give the copyright away (after one bad deal), but simply license it to the client to use on any media, in any territory, for a specific time period. 2 or 3 years seems ok - as after that, the video is usually out of date anyway. This works for me. With work I do that includes very obvious evidence that it is copyright material - re-edits of other videos, for example, it's more tricky. Here is where I do take a risk, because just because the client asserts they own the material, very often it seems unlikely. So although it is not possible here to have a contract clause that states it is the clients responsibility to clear copyright, I still use it, but back it up with some email correspondence that confirms I have been told it is ok by the client. I doubt in a court it would hold much legal water, it would at least show I did try - and ethics wise, I can live with that!


Copyright 'theft' is not a criminal acts here, it's a tort - so two sides in court against each other with a Judge. No legal aid, so it's a fight or give in type of transgression.

As copyright can't be seen - I've realised it's unrealistic to expect other people to have my views, but even though my own son seems to have no dilemma downloading music, I do - even though I realise perhaps I'm the dinosaur - but the law is the law, and because we don't like it isn't to me a reason to just disregard it.

Wow - we've a lot of soapboxes out on this one!

[Nigel Barker]

Paul, could you fill us in on the history of the Limited Manufacture License? How long has it been around? Who had the idea in the first place?

[Nigel Barker]

Originally Posted by Chris Harding

Hi Nigel

Remember that the USA doesn't have anything like what the UK/AUS/NZ has so they face the problem of either putting Royalty Free music on the bride's DVD or simply using copyrighted music and hope that someone doesn't knock on your door or the bride's door.

I was just pointing out that Chip's hypothetical calculations on how much might be charged for ($100 or even $500 per wedding) are way out of line with what is actually charged in those territories where a simple mechanism for licensing music for wedding videos does exist.

[Chris Harding]

Thanks Nigel

I wasn't disputing anything!! I read a post from an Aussie site about a guy trying to do the right thing and contacted a music publisher about costs..12 months later they came back with a price of $10K which was, of course, far too much and far too late!! I guess they were used to dealing with huge broadcast networks so they had no idea how to handle the request.

It's quite ironic that brides themselves will swop and share songs from iTunes amongst themselves (again purely for their own enjoyment) so they seldom understand why we cannot use copyrighted songs in a video.

They issue will probably be resolved one day and many people on DVInfo will already be 6 'under !!

Chris

[Nigel Barker]

Copyright is a modern human invention & the record music industry is even younger. In the early days record companies tried to stop radio stations playing records as they thought that nobody would bother buying records any more if they could hear them on the radio. Eventually they realised that not only was radio play fantastic publicity for the records but they could even get paid for this free advertising on the radio. The amounts paid to artists & record companies for radio broadcast are fractions of a penny even when they are reaching a million times more people than will ever see a wedding video online.

[Chip Thome]

Nigel I knew my numbers were way stupid high, which is why I used them. Chances of 100K wedding videos done here is poor and no one is going to kick in $500 for rights for each one of those. But the math of those two figures is still just a drop in the bucket compared to an industry in the $15,000,000,000.00 range.

Reality is IF somehow licensing was made available here, the proceeds would be far outweighed by the direct costs associated with it. Then you have the indirect costs of dilution of the value of the hottest tunes, as they will be heard in films EVERYWHERE. So the music industry isn't going to bother. Why would they take on something that's going to lose them money ???

With no organization with any clout, compared to the music industry, there's no way videographers here are going to get the kind of deal you guys on that side of the pond enjoy with your licensing agreements. How you guys got that deal, I'd really be interested in knowing how it came about. The only body here with enough power to force the music industry to give us the deal you have, is our government. Also, videographers and their wedding videos is way down the list of issues they are going to deal with in this lifetime.

Over here we know this sucks, but its our laws, the same laws that are to protect our work too.

[George Kilroy]

It's interesting that today I've received the following email from accounts-noreply@google.com:

"Your video may have content that is owned or licensed by Music Publishing Rights Collecting Society.

No action is required on your part; however, if you are interested in learning how this affects your video, please open attached file with Content ID Matches section of your account for more information.

Sincerely,
- The YouTube Team"

[Chris Harding]

Hi George

I get those all the time and most of my weddings are traditional songs played by the Church organist ...I was under the impression that the Wedding March would be fairly copyright free but obviously not!! Where the bride plays CD's with a well known commercial song, I replace it with a SmartSound track and funnily enough YouTube also zaps those even though it is supposed to be Royalty Free.

You will find your video will soon have an ad over it which is supposed to created income for the music publisher or copyright holder...they use some sort of "robot software " to detect music and I doubt whether it's very accurate.

However, that's the way they work!!

Chris

[George Kilroy]

The funny thing is that I don't have any video on YouTube, or Vimeo.

I think it's a scam trying to get me to follow the link.

[Chris Davis]

Originally Posted by Dylan Morgan

I know this has been talked about, but wondering if there's a solution for recording wedding events such as the dances that have music playing. Since we're hired professionals, is there any way around this other than using less that 30 seconds or telling the client that they have to buy the rights to all the songs played? The way that I have read the law is a "hired" work is different and requires rights to the music. Also I figured that adding "clients are responsible for obtaining all copyright music" in my contract wouldn't hold any water. Any thoughts? Thanks!

I quit shooting wedding video because I became convinced that the way the laws are structured in this country, wedding video is illegal. That doesn't mean the cops will come and arrest you, but there really is no way to professionally shoot a traditional wedding and remain within the bounds of the law.

BTW, the "30 seconds or less" exception is an urban legend. Using any amount of unlicensed music is a violation of copyright.