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Soundclicks: Posting covers?

14K views 39 replies 17 participants last post by  Pete Thomas 
#1 ·
I have 1 original tune on a Soundclicks page but hesitate to post any non original songs because I don't get how the copyright rules work. How can you tell if a song is public domain? If you're doing a cover song and not selling it or claiming it's yours, do you have to get permission? What about You Tube? That's full of all kinds of covers. Is that any different?
 
#2 ·
You always have to get permission. Not selling it etc doesn't mean a thing. Getting that permission involves the Harry Fox Agency usually.

anything published prior to 1923 is in the Publid Domain.

Posting covers is all about risk, the risk you will be found out, the risk the copyright owner will believe you are doing damage to his/her/it's property.

One source I've found for Public Domain information is, surprisingly www.pdinfo.com You can purchase copies of sheet music with the publication date, which is a nice form of "insurance." The site also has some good information on copyright.
 
#3 ·
Have been looking for a way to record some sample tunes, to post here on the forum for comment. I'm not a real performer, just a late bloomer trying to learn the sax.

I saw that many folks use the www.soundclick.com site to accomplish this, and see many many of the standards as well as newer tunes on peoples pages there. Those listings only rarely are listed as "cover" category, yet most are not public domain tunes (I looked several up to check this).

So I read the posting rules, and there is the letter to the publisher, the payment for down loads, but specifically no payment described for streaming delivery. So question #1 is, "If posting a tune and setting it for streaming only, does a person need to go through this whole process?"

Their site does say you need to do it even if not selling. So I think, what the heck, maybe I just do the letter. So I go to look up a simple tune, Georgia on My Mind, and the BMI search comes up with 5 different writer/composer names under 3 different publishers. Well that is just stupid. I think, certainly all 5 of these folks didn't write this song. So question # 2+ is, "How can this be? Are these slightly different versions of the same song? If I am playing by ear, and my ear ain't that good, how am I suppose to know which version I am botching up?"

I certainly understand a composer/song writer's desire to protect and benefit from their intellectual property, but my efforts are no more of an intrusion in that regard than me whistling some tune while walking down the street. Further, when I do use sheet music (which is a lot), I have always bought the music from a legitimate source, so I do feel that I am correctly rewarding the owners of that property for their efforts. I would think that alone would cover the not-for-profit insignificant level of recording as a learning experience that I might do, but almost certainly this is not so under the strict letter of the law.

So last question, "Between the law and the real world, what is accepted action for recording of this type?"
 
#21 ·
I certainly understand a composer/song writer's desire to protect and benefit from their intellectual property, but my efforts are no more of an intrusion in that regard than me whistling some tune while walking down the street.
Man I'm with you on this one. If you don't want people to play your tunes, then don't sell us your records.
 
#10 ·
The Real Book said:
Sixth Edition
This new edition contains tunes that are re-arranged, re-transcribed and most importantly, licensed, so that you may study and play play these works more accurately and legally. Enjoy!
It says licensed?
ie, they licensed the tunes to put in the book. That doesn't give anyone else a licence to upload them or fileshare them.
 
#17 ·
So....I go to the HarryFox site. I'm thinking maybe I just do the fully legal thing. Register as a user, look up Georgia on My Mind, yes, they cover that song 100% (if they didn't, you supposedly need to get the other percent parts from whoever has them).

But it is total infeasable to license for streaming. The reporting requirements for streaming require information out of soundclick that you will not have access to.

O.K. then, look at the permanent download option. smallest quantity is 25 downloads @ $0.091 each for $2.28 PLUS the Harry Fox fee of $15.00 for a total of $17.28. This to legally license the one song, for a maximum of 25 downloads, for 1 year. Honestly, that is crazy expensive for what most of us posting a tune for friends and critique can spend. If the Harry Fox fee had been something like $1.50 I would just pay it and post the song. Of course, under this scenario it would be a nice feature of the hosting web site to put a lock on the number of downloads that could happen. Not that I think there is a risk that there would be 26 people in the world who really want to download any song of mine, but if they can not legally stream it, since it wouldn't be licensed that way, how many might click to get a listen and then delete.

Furthermore, this license option is only for the song in substantially its copyrighted form. Change it, mix it blend it to a medley, all require yet a different type of license. This is worse than the tax code. Compliance with the law is much easier when the law is simple and easy to comply with. I venture a guess that 80% + of the songs on soundclick are there without legal licensing. If there was a simple, easy and low cost way to license the huge quantity of illegal distributions, I am sure the net royalties would skyrocket.

Rant complete.
 
#18 ·
Yes, but if you are posting it on soundclick, it's not up to you to get the licence. That is only for if you are posting on a your own site.

I understand what you are saying, I try to do the fully legal thing and I find all kinds of obstacles.

I once rang up MCPS to ask for a licence to make a compilation CD for my mum. They said I had to contact each publisher and each record company for each song to get permission.

Another time I rang Sony to ge permission to sell my arrangement of Egyptian Fantasy by Sidney Bechet. They never replied to my calls.
 
#19 ·
A bit off the topic, but I was just reading the local paper to see what tunes were being played around town this week, and the the one entry said, come on down hear some great original music as well as excellent covers. It made me wonder, and perhaps this is obvious to others, but is the term "cover charge" at a bar with a band stemming from the need for the artists to pay to play the cover songs?

Up until this moment, I had it in my head that this was for the bar to cover their cost to hire the band, but the connection to "cover songs" just now struck me.
 
#20 ·
Bars, clubs, and restaurants pay...(or are supposed to pay)...license fees to ASCAP in order to have music in their establishments. This includes any sort of live or recorded background music like you might hear in a fine dining restaurant. With those fees being paid by the establishments, it's not the performer's responsibility to "pay in order to play". It's already covered.

While the origin of the term "cover charge" isn't clear...it's certainly a probability that a portion of the cover charge, in addition to paying the performers, could also be used to offset the required license fees.
 
#22 ·
I have posted several songs on Soundclick. Most have been posted for 6 months with no problem. I have carefully observed all copyright laws. There are a couple of aspects that have not yet been covered here.

One problem is naming a song. I use the HFA web site to check that the "new name" I just gave a new, impromptu composition does not duplicate a name of a song already copyrighted. I got into trouble on this point with a song I named "Now." I finally pulled the song after Soundclick refused to rate it.

I have just encountered another problem related to copyright that you can hear now on my Soundclick site. That is the use of copyrighted material within the Keyboard used as a backup to my horn-playing. I'll discuss more on this aspect in another topic on this thread.

With regard to some things stated above, I would caution you that you cannot rely on what some people say about songs being in Public Domain. Just because a song was first published before 1923 does not mean it was not re-copyrighted after that date. There are many such instances. Also, I have found incorrect listings in the publications of "Public Domain" music. Those publications all say that you use such advice at your own risk.

I have been tempted to go through the process of posting a cover song with permission. The big fear, of course, is if 10,000 people suddenly downloaded the song and I owed the publisher $7500. You say, okay but you can charge a dollar per download. The Soundclick basis for payment on cover songs is "per download". In all the months I have had songs posted, I think there has been only one download. Most people can just listen to the song and capture it on their system without going through a formal download. This might make it possible to post cover songs without much fear of incurring a large obligation.
 
#23 ·
With regard to some things stated above, I would caution you that you cannot rely on what some people say about songs being in Public Domain. Just because a song was first published before 1923 does not mean it was not re-copyrighted after that date. There are many such instances. Also, I have found incorrect listings in the publications of "Public Domain" music. Those publications all say that you use such advice at your own risk.
It depends on the country, but a song doesn't fall into the public domain until a certain number of years after the composer's death. In the US it is 70 years. In Canada it is 50 years.
 
#24 ·
Hmm, interesting. Good to be aware of this stuff. Think it's likely you'd get into any more trouble than just being asked to remove the copyrighted material though? (outside of a situation where you had made a substantial profit from selling covers of copyrighted songs). I admit to absolute ignorance when it comes to this sort of thing, and this may be naive, but it seems unlikely to me that the consequences would be any more serious than "please remove the song in question or pay for permission to use it".
 
#25 ·
Hmm, interesting. Good to be aware of this stuff.
It is very interesting. I'm kind of on the fence in that the same laws that protect what I for for a living as a composer, make it harder for me to present material as a teacher or purveyor of information.

The problem is that there are those who think all music should be free, or who do not realise the struggle that the creators of some of that music went through, and that their only reward is via royalties.

I see many people quoting "fair use" as a way to just bypass the dues that are owed to the musicians who created some great stuff, and may be living in poverty because they don't get the royalties that they are due.

It's easy to say "yes, but this money is going to publishers and record companies, not the musicians and composers". Well, that may be true in some cases. But regarding composers, by law they must get 50% at least, so that argument doesn't stand up as well as many people think.
 
#26 ·
Right, of course, I wasn't thinking of it from that point of view.. good point Pete, again. I don't make my living as a composer so I wasn't thinking outside my bubble ;)
also was talking more in terms of putting standards (many composers of which are no longer around) on soundclick, rather than modern stuff... I don't like the idea of cheating living composers out of their royalties, but I also don't really care if it's illegal to put a streaming mp3 of myself playing Stella on a website (which, checking Victor Young's death date, it may not be). Maybe I'm a hypocrite.
 
#27 ·
Maybe I'm a hypocrite.
I don't think so, it's all very confusing for most of us. As I said, I stand on both sides of this fence. The law is very clumsy, it doesn't work very well in some cases.

Recently I discovered some software I wrote that I sell for £5 a download to a small niche market (and this took me about 150 hours of frustrating work to create) is now being offered on a torrent site. It's not big business, so far I've sold about 19.

The really upsetting thing is all the money from this is going to charity, helping disabled children to play music.

This is the ugly side of copyright theft IMO, the lowest of the low.
 
#28 ·
This is such an old thread that I hesitate to contribute. It ended before i started publishing on Soundclick! But I have issues with Soundclick, notably the difference between "streaming" and "downloading". When I found Soundclick, I had just aquired several 'RealBooks" so that I could do jobbing as lead horn backed up by various sidemen. I understood that the "house' pays the fees on that stuff. I was verydissappointed to learn that I could not do "covers" without a lot of hassle and some financial jeopardy. (My house is nearly paid off!)

So I bit the bullet and began composing and arranging my own music to post, checking with HFA to make sure the titles were not already copyrighted. That turns out to be a major challenge! I have posted two Public Domain songs, Danny Boy and Poor Butterfly. There has been a learning curve that the few listeners I get have suffered through. Now I am able to turn out some reasonably decent pieces and it has become an enjoyable activity. I use a keyboard for background music. That helps a lot. (I have to be careful not to use canned recordings that come with the keyboard because THEY are copyrighted! So I do my own endings and throw in a few extra drum beats).

I have thought about doing some covers, paying all the fees, etc. But Soundclick says the fees apply only to Downloads. Out of many hundreds of "Listens" over the past 15 months, I have had only a handful of Downloads. But then, being that the Internet is totally unpredictable, on two consecutive days, someone downloaded all 23 songs. Never say never.

I'll just keep hacking away at my original compositions and arrangements. It's fun and it has the advantage of letting you showcase an instrument any way you want to. You are not limited to finding a suitable song that somebody wrote 70 years ago.
 
#29 ·
Luckily where i live these laws aren't strictly enforced, you can be a cover band and do performances without trouble. The boyfriend of my sister is in a band that makes punk covers from a group that was populair when we were small, as long as they donate all the money of their cd's to charity nobody will sue them.
 
#30 ·
I have a s Soundclick account, and based on the wording I read there, it is *not* legit for me to post my cover of a copyrighted composition without me separately purchasing a license via Harry Fox or other.

Does anyone know if there is a web site where one can post their performances of covers songs for a fee, where that site will agree to pay some reasonable royalty to the copyright holder of that composition? Perhaps that site might only allow listening to the song, but not downloading it, to reduce the perceived value, and thus reduce the royalty cost?

I guess this would be sort of like a "reverse iTunes". Does anyone know of such a web site?
 
#32 ·
Does anyone know if there is a web site where one can post their performances of covers songs for a fee, where that site will agree to pay some reasonable royalty to the copyright holder of that composition? Perhaps that site might only allow listening to the song, but not downloading it, to reduce the perceived value, and thus reduce the royalty cost?
I don't know of such a site, but here in the UK, the MCPS/PRS can issue a LOEL "limited online exploitation licence which allows you to post copyright tunes on your own site. I got one of these and it's not too expensive IMO. I'm sure it's the kind of thing most countries' royalties organisations will be looking into.
 
#31 ·
I have a quite a few standards on Soundclick and didn't really think deeply about laws. I can't imagine anyone getting upset because some shlub has a song one of their relatives wrote or that belongs to their company, on a little music site. I think there is a fine line somewhere and when posting on Soundclick, you don't really cross it.
 
#35 ·
Also as I understand it one cannot copyright a song title, but as always I reserve the right to be wrong. ;-)
That may or may not be true. A title is part of the words, which have a copyright. Of course for a copyright in a title to be enforceable, it would need to be a significant part of the words, e.g. you couldn't have a copyright in I will always Love You or Yesterday but it wouldn't surprise me if you could have a copyright in something a bit longer and a "creative" part of the lyric, e.g. If I Said You Had a Beautitful Body Would You Hold it Against Me.

If it's illegal to post a standard tune on Soundclick without permission, is it illegal for me to play the same tune on my car stereo while in public? .
No, that's a totally different thing. You can also whistle in the street.

But if I make a film, and in that film you walk past the camera whistling, I would need to get a clearance for the tune to be in film.
 
#34 ·
If it's illegal to post a standard tune on Soundclick without permission, is it illegal for me to play the same tune on my car stereo while in public? I don''t think so. If it is, it's impossible to enforce. How about whistling a tune while walking in public? I know there is a copyright lawyer somewhere in the midst of SOTW. Without knowing the specific laws and loopholes, we can talk about it without conclusion for decades.
 
#36 ·
Let me try an analogy: Before things existed such as iTunes, amazon mp3 downloads, and other fee-based song download sites, the only way you could own a "legit" copy of a song was to buy the entire album. There were many pop songs I liked where I did not want the entire album, and getting just that one song was not worth $10 to me. Making an illegal copy from a friend would not feel right (yes, I admit I have done it). Using iTunes/amazon/etc, I can get that one song - for $1 or $1.30 or whatever it is. That's worth it to me.

For a covers band of weekend warriors, the Harry Fox fees are not worth it (to me) for posting a song. I'm not saying the fees are unfair - they can charge whatever they want to - it's their asset (composition). I'm just saying it's not worth it to me. And as another poster here mentioned, it is not clear if we would get enough info to know how many people listened to a particular song we would post on Soundclick (or wherever). But if someone were to create a "reverse iTunes for covers bands" with a modest fee for streaming only (no downloads), that might be worth it to me. Since one posting of a song could be listened to my multiple people, its value would probably be more than purchasing a single song from iTunes/Amazon. Maybe $3 or $5? I would pay it.
 
#37 ·
WARNING: Folksy anecdote below.

When things become too contrived and the systems become too complex or "risk adverse" to allow anything to happen, I always think back to what my daddy told me many years ago. He said, "There's no way to legally haul a load of logs down the road. If you want to succeed, you just have to do it and hope for the best". :bluewink:


Logger's #1 Motto: Never stop, never look back.
 
#38 ·
The key term you guys are missing is "broadcast". You are forbidden to broadcast a copyrighted song without the author's permission. Whistling and playing a tape, CD or MP3 in your car are not broadcasting. One could possibly say the same about soundclick in that yesterday not one person visited my set of songs!

Making and distributing recordings would also be considered as "broadcasting." But merely playing a recording you made for your own enjoyment is not.
 
#40 ·
I really doubt that, unless they are paying a license. They wouldn't put themselves in the firing line for something they can't have the resources to police.

In fact (from Sounclick's terms):

"Copyright and Trademark Infringement Policy and Notification Procedure: SoundClick does not own the musical compositions, sound recordings, art or other written or visual images (collectively, the "Content") posted by third parties to the Website. All Content is posted by an individual, group or company (collectively, the "Artist") who has represented and warranted to SoundClick that, among other things, neither the Content nor the names, trademarks and service marks under which Content is promoted (collectively, the "Name") infringes any third party's copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret or other proprietary rights, rights of publicity or privacy, or moral rights (see the section titled 'Representations and Warranties' of the current SoundClick Music Submission Agreement at http://www.soundclick.com/docs/legal.cfm).

Since SoundClick is not in a position to determine who has the prevailing claim to use any particular Content or Name posted to the Website, its policy on such matters is that they be resolved directly by the parties alleging misuse of their Content and/or Name (the "Complainants") and the Artists. We recommend that Complainants immediately notify Artists about allegations of infringement by going to the Artist's page on the Website, clicking the Contact link and contacting the Artist directly. It has been SoundClick's experience that most Artists are honest and responsible citizens who may not realize they are engaged in infringing activities. Typically, once notified of a claim, Artists voluntarily cease using such infringing Content and/or Name on the Website and elsewhere. "

Ooops, I hope I haven't infringed Soundclick's copyright by posting their terms here. That would be ironic.
 
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