Laws and regulations on covering music.

[Fatalmasterpiece]

I want to do several cover songs but I am unfamiliar with the industries laws and regulations on the matter.

I would assume you would have to ask the label for permission and they would ask for payment.

However, so many people have done covers of Phantom of the Opera for example that I hardly believe they all contacted Mr. Webber himself on the matter.

Does anyone have any knowledge on this matter, and please, not speculation. I would like to publish some of these and the last thing I want is an angry letter from a label demanding compensation.

[georgeinar]

I don't have time to look for the threads in here right now, but if you dig around in the previous threads on this topic there are discussions here that explain how to do this. Basically, you do contact the publisher I believe who owns the copyrights and every year or so you have to send them income statements or something like that along with their cut of any income. I did read about another clause where you can sometimes pay them something up front. I decided not to do it after I read the laws. In my case it would be a noose around my neck. It's not like I have a whole staff to take care of my paperwork. Not to mention the millions that I'm not making off my cds.

[JonSolo]

Live covers- not really a big problem. It depends on the venue. Many venues pay royalties through ASCAP...and many do not. But only in rare cases is there a major mess made about it.

Recorded covers- This depends on how widely your CD is distributed. A lawyer would argue this, but really, who is going to come after you when you have burned a copy for your grandmother and Uncle Bob and they really don't listen much cause they don't appreciate it?

On the other hand, if you start promoting your CD online and in local stores you are going to need to consider a license. In most cases they (the original publisher) wants a single dollar figure along with their permission to cover the song. But I believe the law only requires that you cover mechanical royalties with is pennies (was around .09 USD) per pressing per song. So if you press 1000 you owe someone $90. However, they usually want to grant you a general license and charge a lot more.

There is a great site for this:

http://cdbaby.net/dd-covers

Jon Solo

[Fatalmasterpiece]

Thank you. That sounds about right and hopefully I can find a way to pay up front. I hope that some of the songs, being from Europe, may not be too hard to track down publisher wise.

I read that you must not variate greatly in notes from the original song. I wonder how that is interpretated. Sometimes it is fun to put a little twist on things or heck, one may not play something 100% correctly by ear.

[JonSolo]

If you vary it too much, you can call it a parody and then need NO ONE's permission to do it.

That is how Weird Al got away with it.

[Fatalmasterpiece]

Interesting. I might still want to play it safe and get the rights but I will keep that in mind.

Some of the songs I wanted to cover are done electronically with arpegiators, like VNV Nation's Beloved. I plan to emulate the sounds with real instruments but obviously, there will be strong differences since some chords would be simplified etc. I do not know if that would be varied enough or not.

[Giner]

This isn't really the same as Fatalmasterpiece's situation, but what if I updated and recorded a song that I wrote, released, and had significant airplay with 37 years ago? (seven plays per day on BBC Radio 1, though it never became a 'hit' record). The publisher himself has long since passed on although the label, Philips, are still in existence - or are they? Also, any written contracts I once had are long since gone. Any thoughts out there?