Music on Websites - legal question

[wurzel]

To cut a long story short I'm doing a website which will incorporate some YouTube mash ups of myself in action. I'd like to have some sort of musical accompaniment to my performances - can you just do that without paying any royalties or having some kind of licence?

I've googled this but there's a lot of conflicting info. The general gist seems to be that if you're publishing songs for download then it's illegal. I'm not doing that, just going to provide a link to Amazon where they can download the song if they desire. I'm guessing that you do have to pay for something but given the sheer volume of stuff uploaded to the web I guess most people take a punt on not getting caught as the chances are so slim?

[Cliphead]

This has been discontinued but this link might be a legal free version;

Cinescore

Creates royalty free music to accompany video. No idea how cheesy it might be.

[TheFaQQer]

Universal had a video pulled from YouTube because it featured a baby dancing while the radio was on, and the mother who posted the video didn't have a licence for the song to be included in the video (linky).

So, it does happen that you run the risk of action if you include something infringing.

There is an interesting article here about what rights you might need - the gist, though, is that you probably don't know what rights you need, therefore how can you possibly meet the expectation of having the right to use the music in the first place.

[BlasterBates]

It's simple Copyright, you can't post anything that is copied, pictures, music or text. You can be sued for damages, and some companies employ armies of lawyers googling for copyright infringement, sending nasty letters, and demanding outrageous damages. However if the video is of you doing something silly with some music, no-one is going to find out. There would need to be something in the web page that could be found via a google search, so as long as you don't put the name of the artist anywhere there is almost zero chance that someone will spot it.

So to answer your question, yes you must pay royalties, no way round it, but you probably won't be caught, and if you were the damages would actually be quite small, although the lawyer would probably demand a few hundred or maybe a few grand, depending on how popular your video was.

[Sysman]

Universal had a video pulled from YouTube because it featured a baby dancing while the radio was on, and the mother who posted the video didn't have a licence for the song to be included in the video (linky).

So how on earth does so much stuff get posted on Youtube? And stay there?

Sony seem keen here - I see lots of Youtube items blocked by Sony on the grounds I am trying to watch them from Switzerland.

[TheFaQQer]

So how on earth does so much stuff get posted on Youtube? And stay there?

Sony seem keen here - I see lots of Youtube items blocked by Sony on the grounds I am trying to watch them from Switzerland.

Because it needs someone to complain about the offending post and get it removed. That doesn't make it any more or less legal, though.

[wurzel]

This has been discontinued but this link might be a legal free version;

Cinescore

Creates royalty free music to accompany video. No idea how cheesy it might be.

Hmmm, was thinking of Gong or Zappa but a cheesey bit of Klaus Wunderlich might do the trick.

So to answer your question, yes you must pay royalties, no way round it, but you probably won't be caught, and if you were the damages would actually be quite small, although the lawyer would probably demand a few hundred or maybe a few grand, depending on how popular your video was.

I don't suppose the fact that I'm selling the song via a link to Amazon would have any effect?

[NickFitz]

So how on earth does so much stuff get posted on Youtube? And stay there?

Sony seem keen here - I see lots of Youtube items blocked by Sony on the grounds I am trying to watch them from Switzerland.

Google has entered into broad licensing agreements with the music industry and pays them licensing fees. For a while, two or three years ago, Google just pulled videos featuring copyrighted music. Then they came to an agreement but initially it only covered North America, so there were videos you could see in the US and Canada but couldn't watch if you were in the UK and Europe, or Asia, and so forth. After a few months they finalised the terms for the EU, so those videos became available again and posting new ones was (usually) permitted.

As Switzerland isn't part of the EU, there presumably has to be a separate agreement between Google and Sony to cover it.

[darmstadt]

Google has entered into broad licensing agreements with the music industry and pays them licensing fees. For a while, two or three years ago, Google just pulled videos featuring copyrighted music. Then they came to an agreement but initially it only covered North America, so there were videos you could see in the US and Canada but couldn't watch if you were in the UK and Europe, or Asia, and so forth. After a few months they finalised the terms for the EU, so those videos became available again and posting new ones was (usually) permitted.

As Switzerland isn't part of the EU, there presumably has to be a separate agreement between Google and Sony to cover it.

Still see this in Germany. What gets me is that sometimes its a German video as well which isn't shown in the rest of the (non-German) speaking world.

[Sysman]

Google has entered into broad licensing agreements with the music industry and pays them licensing fees. For a while, two or three years ago, Google just pulled videos featuring copyrighted music. Then they came to an agreement but initially it only covered North America, so there were videos you could see in the US and Canada but couldn't watch if you were in the UK and Europe, or Asia, and so forth. After a few months they finalised the terms for the EU, so those videos became available again and posting new ones was (usually) permitted.

As Switzerland isn't part of the EU, there presumably has to be a separate agreement between Google and Sony to cover it.

Thanks Nick, that explains it.

It might also explain some other things going on here in CH. Think TV/Radio licencing and tax on DVDs...

(I only use DVDs for data backup, but the assumption seems to be that I'm using them for music and videos. It makes them ludicrously expensive per GB in comparison with external disks)