music on background, legal or not ?

[Darby Edelen]

That depends on who you are, what you’re doing the film for and how you add the radio sound.

If you’re a student doing a project exclusively for school, for example, then you can pretty much get away with anything.

If this is a professional undertaking, or will be shown publicly, then you need to be concerned with copyrighted broadcasts and music. I would recommend, in this case, to add the radio noise/music entirely in post-production with royalty free (and make sure it’s really royalty free for all uses) music/sound effects.

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Darby Edelen]

To expand on my post, I believe that filmmakers are somewhat protected from copyright infringement if the capturing of copyrighted images/sounds is entirely incidental. If you’re filming on the street and a Coca-Cola truck happens to drive by, for example. However, this wouldn’t apply to your situation as you could obviously avoid recording a radio in a controlled environment.

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Steve Roberts]

You might want to search the Broadcast Design COW or Business COW for “license” and “music” or “copyright”. This has been discussed before.

The consensus seems to be: “yes, it’s illegal, but in a lot of cases, nobody will bother with you”.

But if you’re exhibiting the thing publicly, yes, you’ll definitely need clearance. Consider stock music, or music written by a local artist. But if it has to be that Stones tune or something, welcome to the real world: don’t write it into the script unless you can get clearance in advance. 🙂

Of course, none of us are lawyers, as far as I know.

[Steve Roberts]

Hmm … I’d disagree. If that happened in a Spielberg picture, he’d get nailed for infringement, because he could have locked down the set. I don’t think the law wants to allow infringement because someone couldn’t afford to lock down a set. Or says he couldn’t afford to (wink) lock it down.

So it still comes down to usage. Maybe it’s cool in a doc, but not in a feature. I don’t know. I’m just speculating. 🙂

[Alexei]

Thanks a lot!
I think I got the point.
I’d better modify my script, it won’t hurt I believe 🙂
Regards,
=Alexei=

[Deleted User]

Hello,

In the UK MCPS/PRS http://www.mcps.co.uk who administer all recording of music for film, tv, radio etc they state if you have shot a film etc and you happen to for example be shooting a documentary and a radio is playing in the background you would have to clear the licence fees for the music content.

If possible use royality free or production music, a company I use are http://www.extrememusic.com and http://www.bmgzomba.com they have pretty good rates for the music content to be used in films, multi media and so on.

I am not sure how it works in the US how you go about gettng the licence for music.

Hope that helps?

Leo

[Alexei]

it does help
thank you Leo,
=Alexei=

[Deleted User]

No problem at all! Good luck with your production.

Leo 🙂

[Moviemaker2727]

what about if a song id in your soundtrack and you are uploading it into youtube…how much troble could you actually get in?

[Erik Pontius]

You’ll find it a lot easier to add music in post for continuity and to avoid stepping on dialog. On every set I’ve ever been on radios, CD players, walkies, etc… are always turned off or so low you can’t hear it at all, or play nothing but silence. Nothing like smashing the illusion of your film’s reality if the song keeps skipping and changing between angles and cuts.

Erik