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More info?)
The songs are not are not really "bought" - in others words when you buy a
CD, or purchase a downloaded file, you do not own the music on the CD or in
the file, only the "creator"of that music (i.e. the songwriter or composer)
actually owns the music. When you buy their product, you only purchase the
right to use a copy of the music, on the CD or in the file, for your own
listening pleasure, other rights are restricted, such as the right to copy
and re-sell or re-distribute those additional copies. This restriction
includes re-distribution in all forms, including film & video soundtracks.
This is why it is called copyright (copy + right)
It is sort of like renting someone your car (or house, or whatever) - they
do not own it, but they pay for the use of , but that does not give them the
right to do anything they like with it, like sell or give it away, modify it
in some way (such as re-painting it), or doing other things with it you
would not like (like enter it in a demolition derby, rent or lend to another
person who you do not know or trust, or take it off-road if it's not an SUV,
for instance) - when renting, your payments are recurring over time, of
course, while with music you pay the "rental fee" once & that's it.
Whether you agree with this or not, this is how copyright law works. There
are many who would like to see this system chnaged to be less restrictive,
but regardless, this is is how it is now, and not likely to change soon
Radio stations, television stations, film producers, etc., even nightclubs
and bars, all have to pay special additional royalties for their use of the
music you hear in their productions or facilities. When you see a band in a
restaraunt, club, or bar that performs their own "cover" version of popular
tunes, that establishment (the restaraunt, club, or bar) has already paid an
annual license fee that covers the general cost of re-using all the music
that is going to be performed there - including recorded music from a DJ or
background music system. Then a performing rights society, that collects
this money, distributes it to the respective writers and composers based on
popularity statistics, gathered from samples of radio airplay, record store
sales, etc. (i.e. they cannot monitor every song by every band in every
club, or on every radio station, but the odds are that the more popular
songs will get performed more often, so those writers get a bigger share of
the money)
If you wish to use music in your videos there are a number of options:
1. Find music that has been released under a different licensing system
(such as Creative Commons) which allows for the copying and re-use. These
other systems are somewhat similar to the open source licensing systems that
are found on the computer software world. Even under these systems, you
still do not "own" the music, but the owner has decided that they would like
to grant you broader rights than the conventional system. There are several
different systems, and the extent to which they extend rights will vary. You
will needed to research the various license types and to what extent they
grant rights
2. Use only public domain music. This is usually older music as copyright
usually extends until, I believe, 99 years after the composer's death. Most
classical compositions are public domain, however you still have to be
careful, although the composition may be public domain, it's possible a
sound recording of a particular perfomance of one of these tunes can have
its own copyright restrictions.
3. Write to the publisher of the music piece you wish to use and get
permission to re-use the music in your video. They may or may not charge a
fee for its use - depending on the song, the type of video, where and how
the video is going to be distributed, the business attitudes of the
copyright owner and more. If you are doing a non-commercial production you
may be pleasantly surprised. My brother-in-law, who is a professional
photographer and videographer, recently had a song he wanted to use on a DVD
he was putting together as his "demo reel". He wrote to the song publisher
for permission and they happily gave it, at no charge, because it was a
non-commercial release, as long as he provided full credit to the perfomer,
composer and publishers on the DVD (a small price to pay).
4. Purchase a royalty free production music library. This is music that has
been written, recorded, and released specifically for re-use in film or
video productions and the like. It is usually highly stylized and
categorized by recognizable style names. Trouble is the good stuff can be
pretty expensive. If you are a professional video production house you can
justify the cost, but if you are an amateur or semi-pro it may be beyond
your means. The higher cost is because, similar to popular music, you still
do not own it, but the rights you are granted when you purchase the
recordings include the re-use and re-distribution that will occur with your
video or film production, so you are paying for that up-front at purchase
time, rather than at the time you plan to use it, and you pay for the rights
to all the music in the collection, whether you use it or not, rather than
on a song-by-song or use-by-use basis.
5. create your own - then no one can ever tell you what you can or can't do
with it, because you actually do own it. This may be rather difficult if you
are not a musician, however there is software around that can make music
creation easier for non- musician types. Check out Band-in-a-Box from PG
Music - relatively inexpensive. If you are a musician, you can enter the
chords and styles for the song, have it generate a number of instruments for
you as accompaniement, and then you play the melody and/or your own solos
along with it. If you are not a musician, then you can select a style, and
ask it to generate it's own harmonies, solos and melody based on that style.
The files generated are created using MIDI data, so you need a good synth in
your sound card to play them back. If your sound card is a cheap one and the
synth chip is not very good then the results will sound pretty cheesy, but
if you've got a better quality card with a good synth chip, hosting
realistic (usually wavetable) sounds, it can sound OK. The sound card's
output can then be re-recorded as WAV or MP3 files that you can import into
your video. Or if you have a good software synth, the program itself can
redner the output straight to digital as WAV or MP3. The music is computer
generated though and often it will not have the same easy natural flow that
a real musician has. I have frequently used this technique, sometime just
sitting down and using the software to create 3 or 4 various songs at one
session and then saving them into my own music production library than I can
sort through, and choose from, later on when assembling my soundtracks.
Please note that even if you create your own performance of someone else's
song, by this or any other means, that song is still owned by the
writer/composer, however under a system called compulsory license, you do
not have to get permission to re-use the song. You do, however, still have
to pay royalties if you wish to use the song legally, and for video and film
productions there is no fixed royalty rate. You would have to negotiate with
the copyright holder and/or publisher first.
"randy" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:076201c52a64$66945320$a501280a@phx.gbl...
> music files cannot be downloaded to movie projects. These
> music file are bought and legal so why licesencing
> problems.
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