Poll - How many requests for this song

[Ben Lynn]

I'm curious to know how many of your clients have asked for their recap song to be "Chasing Cars" by Snow Patrol?

I think this is going to be a popular (i.e. overused) recap song by client request.

Let me know.

Ben

[Travis Cossel]

Wow, not once for me.

[Patrick Moreau]

I have had it on one or two lists, which is pretty low, but never for a recap or highlights. We always suggest they leave the highlights music to us and 90% do, which is great as we don't get stuck using songs like Snow Patrol for every other one.

Far more common for us is "Better Together", that seems to be somewhere on over half of the song lists lately. I made the mistake of putting some clips on my blog with some cool songs too, and now nearly every song list has them and they have quickly become much less cool.

[Vito DeFilippo]

I've used it once so far...

[Jimmy McKenzie]

Great idea! I do very few weddings so I suppose I'm out of the loop with regard to licensing so I must ask: Is there now a clearing house for not for broadcast syncronization rights or a royalty payment system in place for such use of musical works?

Is it still free if nobody says anything?

[Travis Cossel]

Originally Posted by Jimmy McKenzie

Great idea! I do very few weddings so I suppose I'm out of the loop with regard to licensing so I must ask: Is there now a clearing house for not for broadcast syncronization rights or a royalty payment system in place for such use of musical works?

Is it still free if nobody says anything?

No, and for great entertainment you should check out the other thread that is probably still very near to this one in the list.

[Steve House]

Originally Posted by Jimmy McKenzie

Great idea! I do very few weddings so I suppose I'm out of the loop with regard to licensing so I must ask: Is there now a clearing house for not for broadcast syncronization rights or a royalty payment system in place for such use of musical works?

Is it still free if nobody says anything?

There's no easy access clearing house for sync rights unfortunately so virtually all the usage of popular songs in wedding videos is illegal and in my opinion constitutes a highly questionable business practice even though it is commonplace. For the retail wedding/event portion of the videography profession to thumb its nose at the law like is often done, a law that the majority of the media professionals in broadcasting, feature films, and the music, photography, and publishing industries treats with great respect, and exploiting their fellow creative professionals from the music industry apparently without even a pang of consience is just plain embarrassing. While some people in the industry are doing beautiful work, IMHO their attitude towards copyright and the wink-wink-nudge-nudge acceptance of breaking the law as being just a part of the normal course of business, really tarnishes the whole concept of their being true professionals on a par with the creative people in filmmaking and broadcasting, and I suspect it's one of the reasons that the wedding still photographers, who are very much aware of copyright issues regarding their own work, often look down their collective noses at the videographers.

[Richard Wakefield]

yep, used it once

the requests that are doing my head in are James Blunt - Beautiful, and Jack Johnson - Better Together!

same as Patrick, in that once people hear the songs on your examples, they want it too!

[Mike Oveson]

I don't mean to be rude Steve, so I hope it doesn't come across that way. Would you mind sharing with us what music you use for your work?

[Victor Kellar]

I do almost no work directly for "consumers" Majority of my clients are wedding studios and most of those are affiliated with DJ companies. Officially, the final wedding vid is their product.

This is not a cop out (OK, maybe a little one) but these companies buy music for use in their live event productions; its all licensed and legal and they tell me that these rights extend to using the music in the videos. I don't know if that is totally true but music is their business so I leave it to them

If I need a particular song, say for a client request, the studios use legal, paid download services to aquire them. In their biz, that expense is pretty neligable.

For my corporate work, I have about 20 "buy out" CDs of canned industrial music. I haven't updated that in years cause lately I have been creating my own background music in programs like Soundtrack and Garage Band


This whole copyright thing is an interesting discussion .. I know that my work has been ripped off by other editors in the past and that clearly pisses me off On the other hand, in the few instances I do my own wedding productions, working directly with consumers, I could never do the job without including popular music. In my contract I inform the client of the legal risk. Nobody has never not signed it..

OK, so call me the cop out king. I been called worse

[Patrick Moreau]

I believe there is another thread discussing the use of copyrighted music, so perhaps questions and concerns related to that should be directed to that thread. The posters original questions seem to have been lost pretty quickly.

[Steve House]

Originally Posted by Mike Oveson

I don't mean to be rude Steve, so I hope it doesn't come across that way. Would you mind sharing with us what music you use for your work?

I don't do weddings so its not an issue. Moving back into the industry now after a number of years doing other things. When I was active it was in the corporate and training markets. Then I only used buyout music and today still no reason to change. There are ample libraries of legally available music to use and nowdays with tools such as Cinescore (Sony) and SonicFire (Smartsound) you can create customized tracks that are legal and yet don't sound like elevator music.

[Steve House]

Originally Posted by Victor Kellar

...I do my own wedding productions, working directly with consumers, I could never do the job without including popular music. In my contract I inform the client of the legal risk. Nobody has never not signed it..

...

Unfortunately that contract doesn't protect you in the slightest. Any provision in a contract that is in violation of the law is automatically null and void. Sort of like the brainiacs that go up in front of Judge Mathis trying to argue they're owed money because the defendent didn't make good on the payments for the marijuana they bought - it ain't gonna fly in front of a judge. Since as the producer you are the one performing the act of synchronizing the music to the video, you are the one liable regardless of the contract your customer signed. If you take copyright materials to Kinkos and they copy it for you, they are liable, not you. Same situation when your customer brings you a song and asks you to copy it into the video you're making for them.

[Travis Cossel]

Originally Posted by Steve House

. . . and I suspect it's one of the reasons that the wedding still photographers, who are very much aware of copyright issues regarding their own work, often look down their collective noses at the videographers.

I highly doubt that, seeing as most photographers now include slideshows in their packages . . which are nearly always set to popular, copyrighted music.

[Travis Cossel]

Originally Posted by Steve House

I don't do weddings so its not an issue.

No offense, but if you don't do weddings you don't really understand the difficulty of the situation for videographers.