Songs and copyright 6: how to get permission to use a song

We’ve seen that songwriters, music publishers, recording artists, song arrangers, etc. all have copyright over the songs that they ‘own’. We’ve seen how the law works and what you can and can’t do with other people’s songs.

If you want to use a copyrighted song (to teach, record, arrange, copy, perform, broadcast, etc.), how do you go about it?

Office Depot copyright warning by gruntzooki

Before you can use any work that is in copyright, you must first get permission. Often that permission is not obtained directly from the creator, editor, recorder, performer or arranger of the song, but from an organisation that helps to deal with creative rights.

Also, as we saw last week, the original creator may have sold the rights to their work to another person or organisation. You will need to find out who that is so you can ask their permission.

Each country has its own organisations. The rest of this post refers to the situation in the UK.

important UK organisations

The Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society (MCPS) – now part of the MCPS-PRS Alliance, PRS for Music (see below).

PRS for Music (formerly the Performing Right Society) is a royalty collection society that was founded in 1914. As the MCPS-PRS Alliance, it is an organisation which pays royalties to composers, songwriters and music publishers when the music they have created is sold. This includes sales of the music alone such as CDs and downloads, and also products which use the music as a part of their soundtrack, such as films and computer games.

PPL (formerly Phonographic Performance Ltd.) is the company which licenses recorded music and music videos for public performance, broadcast and new media use. The income generated is then allocated and paid as royalties to their record company and performer members.

Music Publishers Association (MPA) is a non-profit organisation representing music publishers in the UK. It exists to safeguard their interests, and those of the writers signed to them.

UK Music is an umbrella organisation which represents the collective interests of the production side of UK’s commercial music industry: artists, musicians, songwriters, composers, record labels, artist managers, music publishers, studio producers and music collecting societies.

who to ask for permission

For permission to:

• arrange a song – you need to contact the copyright owner. The MPA can help to direct you to them
  
• record music – contact PRS for music (MCPS)
  
• perform music live – contact PRS for music (PRS)
  
• broadcast music – contact PPL and PRS for music
  
• play a recording of music in any public space – contact PPL and PRS for music

what does that mean in practice for my choir?

• If you perform a copyrighted song in a concert, you will need to pay PRS. The payment is usually collected by the venue that you are performing in (if they are licensed). This also applies to performing live for broadcast.
  
• If you want to make a CD, you have to first get permission from MCPS who will tell you which songs are in copyright and then you will have to pay a fee for each copyrighted song based on a percentage of potential income from the CD. You should do this even if you are only selling the CD for peanuts to choir members or friends and family (although in practice, many choirs don’t bother!).
  
• If you want to arrange a song that is in copyright, you will need to ask permission of the person who ‘owns’ the song (not necessarily the original song writer). The MPA can help direct you.
  
• If you want to write a song using text or lyrics that are in copyright, again, you have to ask permission of the copyright owner. In both this and the case above, you may have to pay a fee.

Once you have obtained the right to record or perform a copyrighted song (see above), then you need to protect your rights as a choir in terms of any recordings that are made. Once you’ve legally produced your CD or download, then you will need to protect your rights over someone using that recording to sell, broadcast, copy, etc. PRS for music will be able to give you advice or ask the distributor you use.

if you’re a song writer or arranger ...

There is no need to register a work in order to obtain copyright protection, but there are certain precautionary measures you can take. MPA has a useful guide: How do I protect my music?

You will need someone to administer the rights you have over your work.

• If you become a member of PRS, your rights will be transferred to them. Whenever your music is performed in public or broadcast, they will collect the royalties for you.
  
• If you become a member of MCPS, they will act as an agent on your behalf to administer your rights if someone wants to record your music, and sell or rent CDs, downloads, etc.

further reading

PRS produce a very useful document covering all aspects of copyright law.

Sound Rights is a free online learning resource produced by UK Music, written by professionals in the music industry and music education expert Leonora Davies to answer the national curriculum's new requirement regarding the music industry and copyright.

British Copyright Council is a national consultative and advisory body representing those who create, hold interests in or manage rights in literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works, films, sound recordings, broadcasts and other material in which there are rights of copyright or related rights; and those who perform such works.

As a liaison committee and pressure group for change in copyright law at UK, European and international level, the BCC provides its members with a forum for the discussion of copyright matters.

The Copyright Licensing Agency is aimed at organisations which regularly photocopy and distribute documents (such as sheet music). They license organisations for copying extracts from print and digital publications on behalf of authors, publishers and visual creators.

next week

In the final post in this series on songs and copyright I’ll be looking at alternatives to the familiar copyright law: copyleft, public domain, creative commons, etc.

This is the sixth in a series of seven posts about songs and copyright:

1. Even if it’s a folk song, somebody wrote it
2. Basic principles of copyright
3. Different kinds of rights
4. How the law works
5. Who owns the song?
6. How to get permission to use a song
7. Alternatives

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

Songs and copyright 1: even if it’s a folk song, somebody wrote it

Somebody created that song you’re singing. They may never have written it down, and you may not know their name, but somebody, somewhere, somewhen, made the effort to compose a beautiful piece of music.

Pete Seeger, 1955 by Fred Palumbo

By singing it, you are benefitting from that person’s creativity. Shouldn’t they get some acknowledgement? That’s where copyright comes in.

Jut because a song might be ‘traditional’ or hundreds of years old, it still means that somebody wrote it. Even if it says ‘Anon’ on your copy. That person might not have been a professional musician, but surely they should get some credit or acknowledgement?

What if you had spent weeks finely crafting a beautiful song, then somebody heard it and began to pass it off as their own? Wouldn’t you – at the very least – be a bit miffed?

And what if they wrote down your song (from hearing you singing it), published it in a songbook which sold in its thousands and made a handsome profit?

Of perhaps somebody took your song and changed some of the words and moved some of the notes around in order to make it ‘better’.

What if you planned to sell your new song, but then found that somebody had photocopied the score you had written and passed it around for free among their mates?

Maybe somebody came across an old songbook with your song in it, recorded it for their new CD (without asking you) and made millions. Or perhaps they then used it as part of a film score which went on to make the director a fortune.

It might be that none of these things bother you. But surely it would have been nice if somebody had bothered to ASK YOU if it was OK?

This what copyright is for. Copyright was invented in order to protect the creators of original work, to help stop their work being ‘stolen’ or copied (without their permission) and to enable them to get paid for their creations (if they choose to).

Essentially it enables creators of original work to control how that work is used and to ensure that its integrity is protected.

Many times I go to singing workshops and am taught songs by ear with no reference to who might have written or arranged them. Do those teaching the songs realise that they should have permission to pass the songs on (especially if they’re making money from running the workshop)?

Then there are participants who record the workshop or who come up afterwards to ask for copies of the songs they’ve learnt. Do they not realise that they ought to go out and buy the songbook or CD? Just because a song is passed on orally doesn’t affect copyright or ownership.

What about people who learn a song at a workshop, go home and record the parts which they then distribute to their choir? Just because the song hasn’t been written down doesn’t mean that they can avoid copyright issues.

Just the other day somebody wrote to me and said there was “some confusion” about passing round copies of sheet music in their choir. Well, I’m here to tell you that there is NO confusion. If the songs are copyrighted, then you (usually) DON’T have permission to copy them at will and hand them around – whether you give them out for free or otherwise.

In this series of posts I’m going to try to demystify the issue of copyright, although it is a bit of a minefield!

Do let me know if you have any specific questions in this area and I’ll try to answer them.

Next week I’ll begin to look at copyright in more detail as it relates to songs (music, lyrics, arrangements, recordings, performances, sheet music, etc.). First off I’ll consider what the basic principles behind the concept of copyright are.

This is the first in a series of seven posts about songs and copyright:

1. Even if it’s a folk song, somebody wrote it
2. Basic principles of copyright
3. Different kinds of rights
4. How the law works
5. Who owns the song?
6. How to get permission to use a song
7. Alternatives

 

UPDATE (14 July 2015)

Since I wrote this post I’ve written two others that might be of interest:

Choirs and copyright: a beginner’s guide for the bewildered

Copying music: how to stay on the right side of the law

 

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

Quiet at the back please!

I find it hard to believe, but I started my choir WorldSong way back in October 1997, so this is our tenth year of operation! We are planning several events this year to celebrate our 10^th anniversary.

photo by Foxtongue

One of these involves a song commissioned especially for the choir.

We thought it would be great to try something really different, so we have commissioned Klaus Santas, a well-known choral composer based in London, to write us an extended choral piece that is possible to learn without written music. Santas studied with John Cage in Frankfurt in the 1980s, and has composed several operas which are regularly performed in his native Paraguay.

We are very excited by this new piece written in German and Spanish which we have recently started working on. The main difference for us is that we will be singing mainly without using our voices. This presents particular challenges to a community choir who usually express themselves vocally. Another added difficulty is maintaining a strict tempo whilst remaining completely silent. I have spent quite a lot of time developing particular warm-up exercises to help people keep time with each other by counting in their heads. At first it was almost impossible, but I’ve found that by engaging the body the choir are becoming tighter and more accurate by the week.

The new piece, entitled RUHE, is in three “movements”, each in a different key and each at a very different tempo. All three sections are in four part harmony, so there is quite a lot of new material to learn! Given that there is no actual noise coming out of the singers mouths, it is proving to be very difficult to pitch the harmonies accurately, even though they are fairly traditional major keys.

One final challenge for us is the length of the piece: 4 hours and 33 minutes. We are hoping to premiere it at our grand summer concert in Coventry, but are slightly worried that we won’t be able to fit enough other songs in to make for a varied evening of entertainment.

If you are interested in receiving a score of this piece so you can sing it with your own community choir, one will be available after our concert in July. In the meantime, listen out for sound clips on our website.

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com