RE: Copyright issues with old show

[Mark Suszko]

NO.

The file is a mechanical reproduction of the song, which was written by someone. That someone needs to be asked for permission and be compensated. You only get out of the need to pay an orchestra for their specific recorded performance of the tune, but not the writer of the tune or the owner of the rights to reproduce the tune.

But it was a clever try. 🙂

Even shots of a music box playing on screen have to have that music cleared. A MIDI file would be similar, unless it was a MIDI file of public domain songs.

[Todd Terry]

Music gets complicated because there are so many different kinds of rights… publishing, synch, performance, several things.

The MIDI file gets you past everything except publishing rights… i.e., the songwriters.

It’s the same with bar and garage bands doing covers of pop songs. They’re supposed to be paying to do that… even though many/most don’t.

You can’t discount the value (and costs) of publishing rights. Dolly Parton made a fortune off “I Will Always Love You.” But most of that money came from the fact that she wrote it, rather than from when she performed it herself. She made a lot more money off Whitney Houston’s recording of it than she did of her own.

T2

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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Mark Suszko]

The sad corollary to that being Falco, and “Der Kommissar”, which has made millions for everybody but him.

Falco’s story should be on the syllabus at Berklee or wherever as a cautionary tale.

[Jason Jenkins]

Sometimes you can find royalty free songs that are produced to sound similar to the popular song, but are different enough to avoid copyright issues. I wanted to use ‘Eye of the Tiger’ once, and I managed to find a buyout song called ‘Glare of the Leopard’, which worked well.

Jason Jenkins
Flowmotion Media
Video production… with style!

Check out my Mormon.org profile.