Chris' Tidbits and Tips

[doylemusic]

Sorry to be way off topic, but Chris did you get my email on the two tunes? Shoot me an email ([email protected])

[Allen Hallada]

Great stuff Chris,
I'll get a link on the Best Desktop for PTLE thread and I'd also post a link on the FAQ thread above too.
Keep up the great work here.
Allen

[jstunner]

Wow! Excellent information here. How do "cover" songs fit in the whole grand scheme of things? If you or your band does a cover of song, do you have to pay a royalty fee? What is the general legal approach to it?

[lemix]

jstunner,
If you /your band is to release said cover song on tangible media ( for free or not ) I'd advice you to visit Harry Fox Agency's site ( in the USA ) Here>> for details. You'll need "Compulsory Mechanical Licence" to do so, unless the original copyright holder ( songwriter/publisher )has given you explicit grant to use it without it.
This info might be outdated, I must apologise if it's so. Has been quite a while since I worked at the Anti Piracy department.

cheers,

[badperson]

great topic chris, thanks for doing this.

I know you've sent me a ton of really informative info. I think everyone should follow this thread with interest.

bp

[cakes]

Hey Chris,

Thanks for your very informative reply. It's disturbing to know that audio fingerprinting software can be fooled so easily, though it sounds like you were talking about duplicating a digital watermark or something that's added to the song. I just checked out the Mediaguide website, and it looks like they identify songs based on the actual audio content. Though I'm sure there are ways of fooling Mediaguide too.

I don't know anything about how much acceptance these different technologies are getting, but I know that ASCAP's point of view is that it would rather do the surveying by itself than rely on radio stations (and, BTW, television stations) to report what they play.

When you say "alternate PRO's", are you saying BMI and SESAC are already requiring radio stations to report ISRC's? i.e. you won't get your royalties if you don't have one?

I just checked, and you (or your record label) do have to submit your recordings to Mediaguide if you want them tracked. ASCAP can't do it because they don't have the recording itself - when you register a song with them, you just fill out a form.

cakes

[Chris Cavell]

Wow! Excellent information here. How do "cover" songs fit in the whole grand scheme of things? If you or your band does a cover of song, do you have to pay a royalty fee? What is the general legal approach to it?

This requires delving a little deeper to cover all the nuances...

There are two sides to a copyright: the song, and the recording. As lemix stated, all you need to obtain in order to record and release a cover is the mechanicals (the right to record the song, include it on an album and sell that album). The Harry Fox agency handles this for most smaller releases. The price for these mechanicals can be quite substantial for a major release (million of pressed copies being sold), as the cost is directly proportional to the number of pressings. In those instances, all involved parties usually enter into a private agreement (contract).

What does this allow you to do? It allows you to record, sell, and retain all the profits from those sales. It does not give you the income gathered by PRO's (ASCAP, BMI, etc.)...in most cases, that goes to the owner of the song, not the owner of the recording, unless agreed upon in a contract b/w all the involved parties.

This still doesn't adress the issue of playing a cover at a gig. That's much simpler. Every venue has to pay a PRO (most negotiate a flat yearly or quarterly fee with the PRO's) to handle this scenario. The performer doesn't pay anything, and the composer (if aware of the performance, and obtains proof of the performance) can submit this info to the PRO they belong to, and receive a little dough (last I checked it was around $50 a performance...for classical stuff anyway...after a certain number of performances have been logged, rates jump up and the bonuses get bigger).

Sooo...if you're in a group that plays cover tunes that have a "composer" (typically jazz and classical), be sure to inform the "composer" every time you play them....they can make a little dough this way.

----------a side note-----------
In treading through all the technical jargon, you may come across the term Synchronization (or Sync) rights. This is the ability to use the recording in a video medium. Things can get a bit complex when negotiating sync rights to a cover. If you plan on doing this, get an entertainment lawyer...I'll leave it at that.
----------------------

I hope this answers your question; Cheers,
Chris

[cakes]

Yes, lemix, that's exactly right, you need a compulsory mechanical license. "Compulsory" means the copyright holders have to give you the license, as long as you pay them (8.5 cents/copy distributed).

You only have to go through Harry Fox if the copyright holders do (some independent publishers don't). Not sure what the fastest way to do that is, but the first step would be to find out who holds the copyright by either searching at ASCAP or BMI or by looking in the original CD's liner notes.

If you're going through Harry Fox, and you're making less than 2,500 copies, you can do it all online using Songfile.

One clarification - you need a mech license for digital distribution too (iTunes, downloading from your website, etc).

cakes

[Chris Cavell]

Cakes,

By "alternate pro's", I meant all the other pro's besides ascap currently use isrc's to some extent. Nearly all of the european PRO's use them exclusively. It's also the only means by which any of them (except for perhaps ASCAP) track digital distrobution (which includes internet and satellite radio). Most use a smaller dataset of handwritten duplicate playlists to doublecheck and perform error calculations that they incorporate into their statistical models. The majority of the larger radio corporations have moved to using a central computerized "cd player" (basically a file server) which automatically keeps track of the playlists and isrc's, and is auditable (to the heads of these corporations, the auditable feature is very important...the single largest investment these companies make is their PRO fee's....to place tracking what they pay for entirely in the hands of the PRO's is something they would not relinquish quietly...it's too large an investment...bigger then their taxes).

I have to sterss this, when the intention to prove the potential fallability of these systems is there, we can do it. (In other words, two songs of similar instrumentation, rhythm, progression, etc, can be intentionally produced in such a similar manner as to regularly fool similar systems in the past which were akin to face recognition programs geared toward audio. Perhaps the technology has finally come so far as to prevent this... Many of the larger corporations involved in the music industry take on a six sigma error scheme in this regard, anything less is not acceptable, and the 1% unintentional error rate of mediaguide is grossly too large an error when it comes to such six sigma schemes and the amount of money at play in the music industry. Being able to blame, and reprimand/fire an individual for any found errors is a far more acceptable approach for the corporate side of the music industry.)

It is good to know about ASCAP's using mediaguide for anyone here who may be an ASCAP member (it was news to me!). To anyone who's a member of ascap, be sure to submit your stuff!

Cheers,
Chris

[cakes]

<oops, deleted double post>