School bands & copyright

dagriff · 11-10-2007, 10:41 AM

Any ideas on what the copyright law is re school bands recording a C.D. for fund raising?

ZOA NOM · ZOA NOM's Garage

Sounds like copyright infringement if they're recording somebody else's music. They might be able to simply get the written permission of the copyright owners. I'm not a lawyer, but common sense sends up a red flag for me.

Gogar · 11-10-2007, 11:50 AM

You need to find out the publisher of each song, and pay them a "mechanical royalty" to record the song. The fee is standardized, and is less than $.10 per song, per copy you print. If your CD has 10 songs, you will typically pay a little bit less than a dollar a copy for the license to all of the songs.

Many times you can find the song info from the Harry Fox agency, which is a clearing house for many, but sometimes not all of the songs you need. If they have an affiliation with the publisher of the song, they can take care of it for you, which is great. If not, you may need to contact the publisher yourself.

www.harryfox.com

Try the link called "HFA songfile" if you're going to print less than 2500 CDs.

There's also a lot of good information on their website about how it works.

the · 11-10-2007, 01:28 PM

Gogar, that's interesting.

Is there a time when a song gets so old and common, that it becomes "common domain" or something like that, and it can be freely used without any permission. Like, for example, "Silent Night," or something like that.

legion · 11-10-2007, 02:05 PM

My school did this when we were in high school. We put together a Christmas album. All of the songs were traditional and decades (if not centuries) out of copyright.

dagriff · 11-10-2007, 02:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by legion

My school did this when we were in high school. We put together a Christmas album. All of the songs were traditional and decades (if not centuries) out of copyright.

The "old" suff is not that much of a problem. Some of the more "modern" e.g. post WW2 is a bit less obvious as to whether its public domain or not. I guess GOGAR's link will help, thanks.

Of course a lot of what someone of my age may think is not that old (60s) is 30 years before the kids were born!

911Rob · 911Rob's Garage

You need permission to "play it", yet alone "record it" when it comes to copyrighted material.

That's it, period.

Same goes with school plays.

rouxroux · 03:04 PM

Since I was a band director for 20+ years, I can help you here. Go to www.jwpepper.com/copyrightres.html for a nice easy read on copyright usage. Many contests these days are demanding original conductor's scores for contests or notification if they are P.O.P (permanently out of print). Please be sure to secure OK before selling any CD's for PROFIT.

rouxroux · 11-10-2007, 03:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 911Rob

You need permission to "play it", yet alone "record it" when it comes to copyrighted material.

That's it, period.

Same goes with school plays.

For performance rights only (to "play it"), your original copies of the compsition/arrangement will suffice. But when you charge ADMISSION, that's a different story

id10t · 11-10-2007, 06:01 PM

Umm... anything since '29 hasn't really gone out of copyright, and quite possibly never will... the Disney effect.

If you don't want to license anything then just go with stuff that is public domain. Your performance of it will become copyrighted to you...

kstar · 07:09 PM

I came across some cool music, prompted by this thread.

Some public domain music with original recordings including Robert Johnson and Leadbelly, among others. Really amazing stuff.

http://www.publicdomain4u.com/

There are sites that simply list public domain songs, but I like this one because you can actually listen to some history for free . . . and cover them for nothing.

FYI.

Best,

Kurt