Loudr and Easy Song Licensing are independent services that charge a small service fee (around $15 per song) to get a mechanical license for each song you want to cover. It`s great, because if you`re covering an obscure song from an indie band from Wyoming or a French international songwriter, you couldn`t. So how do you legally publish a cover on YouTube? To find the answer, we need to understand the two most important copyrights in a song: one in the composition (lyrics and music) and the other in the sound recording. KURT DAHL is a renowned entertainment advocate and full-time touring musician with his band One Bad Son (onebadson.com). Legal and career advice based on his experience in the music industry over the past 15 years can be found on his website lawyerdrummer.com. But there is a common case where you may need more than just a mechanical license. If you want to post a video of your cover on YouTube and you think there`s a chance of more than a few people watching it, you`ll need a dubbing license that covers combining sound with a visual experience. The United States Copyright Act grants copyright owners six exclusive rights, including the right to reproduce and the right to distribute their compositions in phonograms. When you record a cover of an existing song, you are effectively using someone else`s copyrighted work, and it must be compensated for the use if you distribute the recording on physical and/or digital media. If you`re planning to do a cover of a popular song, chances are many other artists will cover or cover the same song.
With multiple releases of the same song in the global music ecosystem, it`s important to differentiate your recorded version of the original song from all others. This is done with a unique identifier called the International Standard Recording Code, or ISRC for short. The article covers the history of the most common type of license you need to release a cover: the mechanical license. It actually goes back to the days of mechanical pianos, when you were literally mechanically reproducing the sound of the song! With these services, you estimate the number of downloads/CDs you will sell and pay that amount x 9.1 cents (the mechanical royalty set by the U.S. government – if the song is less than 5 minutes long). So if you think you`re going to sell 1,000 downloads of your Oasis cover, you`ll pay $91 upfront + the service fee. Each service then passes on 100% of these royalties to the publisher of Oasis. […] My suggestion: Do your research. If you want to avoid being permanently banned from YouTube, check which songs are included in You Tube`s 2012 deal with the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) and the Harry Fox Agency (HFA).
Try to reach the owner of the song. And just like in baseball, when you have two hits, make your next decision wisely! The term “mechanical” refers to the time when songs were mechanically reproduced in phonograms. Legal mechanical royalties are determined by the Copyright Royalty Board. The biggest difference between Loudr, Easy Song Licensing, and Songfile is that Songfile only issues licenses for the songs they represent. HFA [which runs Songfile] represents most publishers (in America), but not all. So if you want to cover an obscure German band (without US representation) or a hot independent band from Boston that doesn`t have a publisher, you can`t do it via HFA. Loudr and Easy Song Licensing will track down these licenses for you. But a mechanical license is not enough. The original artist holds certain rights in the song under copyright law, including the exclusive right to reproduce, create derivative works, distribute copies, publicly perform, and publicly display the work. The mechanical license includes reproduction and distribution, but not public performance and performance. Therefore, you need a sync license as well as a mechanical license to legally publish a cover on YouTube (unless the song has entered the public domain).
YouTube covers are fun and can draw a lot of attention to aspiring musicians. But before you release a cover, it`s important to understand the licenses you need to do it legally. And it is advisable to acquire these licenses before spending a lot of time and money recording your music video. As long as you get a mechanical license for the covers you want to distribute, that`s 90% of the combat and all you have to do. If you upload your coverage to YouTube, everything should be fine as long as you realize you can`t generate ad revenue. But learn from my mistake and keep your cover videos away from Facebook for a short time. If the popularity of user-generated content (UGC) platforms like YouTube and SoundCloud has taught us anything about the music industry in the digital age, it`s that emerging artists from anywhere can amass a huge online audience and achieve global reach by posting covers that trigger a reaction. HFA is a membership-based mechanical licensing agency owned by SESAC.
HFA represents and licenses mechanics in the United States on behalf of its U.S. music publishing members. HFA`s website claims that they currently represent more than 48,000 music publishers. This makes it easier for you to access them for many of the most popular songs released in the United States. The HFA service to get a mechanical license is called SongFile. TuneRegistry is an all-in-one music rights and metadata management platform that is also an approved ISRC manager that offers free and discounted ISRC codes included in its subscription plans. You can quickly and easily get ISRCs for each of your versions/mixes in your account and use the ISRC instantly with any digital distributor to distribute your trade-in. For a complete list of approved ISRC managers, see www.usisrc.org/managers/index.html.
The copyright owner of the song must grant you a mechanical license if you pay a royalty based on the estimated revenue from your cover. You can obtain a mechanical license from the Harry Fox agency. Here are 3 rules you need to know to make sure you don`t get the bad attention from Universal (and others like them) when releasing covers. Once an artist publishes their musical work, anyone can make and distribute their own sound recording of the work (i.e., publish a “cover”) as long as they receive a mechanical licence and pay a “mechanical royalty” to the owner of the musical work (currently 9.1¢ per copy of the song).
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