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Licenses & Royalties: Q & A

For more about selling, we've got a lot of stuff in the indie band survival guide, including these two items had a clear legal rights for your albums, how to get to image that air pre cleared in royalty free um that's just another wee area to do it, but this is another area where we tend to have a lot of questions, so we wanted to leave some room, so we're up for taking whatever you guys have. We actually had a question earlier in the segment from barker bongos with asking how to get their album into more than one region, so their cd is available an amazon, spain and on itunes, spain, but not in the u s and they said their music is online in many places and the group also toward in the u s but they just don't have a way for people in the u s to purchase that their album now and they were asking for some advice from you guys and they say where they were out of spain. Spain ok, so it's, this is an aggregator. Yeah question this is really a limit by the aggregator. Yes, um think about thi...

s like some of the it depends on what, like the aggregators licenses with the apple or with whatever and how it's a region specific so and they also through conversation in the chat room when this was posed, they were asking, is that something that means like maybe their district distributor isn't doing their job as well? Or does that have nothing to do with it? It could be and it's it's hard to know without knowing the specifics, they want to talk to their distributor? Yeah, and make sure that that's the case because it could be limited by region, there's a lot of very complicated copyright laws once she start crossing borders of countries, and what ends up happening is if you're wondering, probably this might be a question that's on your mind will wait if I register my copyright in the united states, is it good in the rest of the world? And vice versa? There's something called the bern convention, b r e convention, it's a treaty, and so international this becomes international long, very complicated, very quickly that can actually affect this kind of stuff. And it's possible that that's playing a role it's also possible of their aggregators and distributing it. And I don't know if they're eligible from coming to spain of working with us aggregator at that point, since they're not distributed here to try and get the music here, I don't know we really would have toe do a deep dive on the aggregator that they use and find out. Because a lot of these aggregators are all about trying to get this into as many markets as possible right? But this is where copyright law kind of bumps up and international laws randy said bumps up against uh what we would like to do selling yeah, right, yeah, very interesting to get more facts on that it gets even more interesting if you want to live in a certain region that's even more confusing which could happen and you might be like, well, why would I want to do that as an individual? Not you probably want to put it out there and have everybody in the world by it and generally that's what happens once you get in the aggregators and we sell music all over the world it's interesting to see the locations like which apple which apple itunes store sold which actually kind of segmented but then the other thing that happens is from the other point of view you might be contractually obligated to onley cell in a certain region and with the digital stores that's actually kind of harder to limit and I wonder if they're running in tow some options in their aggregator that's all I can think of that's a very good question we have to think it's a more honestly that's a good one stumped the expert this's complicated I've never tried to sell music from spain so did we have a question right here I actually did in the mayor may not pertain to this very well, but my band about two years ago for I knew about any of this sign a contract licence are music to the discussion discovery channel okay and it was a whole album we gave him instrumentals and are you know, with the locals as well excellent and how would I be able to they didn't give us specifics on when they were going to play it or on what what show how would I know if they've ever played it? Can I go to a website and do that? Can they never let us know that's an excellent question and it's actually more difficult than it sounds it's also difficult you know what it's similar to the same problem that you have you could do an interview with journalists and they don't always tell you that you're being like covered that well this is why doing a google alerts with your name is important because sometimes you can catch these kinds of things if you're in the credits because it would be posted and actually that's something I'd recommend oddly enough, the other place to do it is and what we talked about from last session which was the various, uh performance rights organizations which actually was supposed to track that kind of thing and they may be able to tell you where it's played in place so when you sign this deal well like was it just for music in general or was it like obviously that they didn't have a show in mind when yeah, I was just in general we actually did it through a certain company it was a licensing company we did it through and then they had contacts with the discovery channel and then they you know, wrote a book contract and how to sign it and we give our music to them and they don't own it but and didn't give us any specifics on where was going to play we're just excited, you know, eighteen year olds oh my gosh, a lot of the specifics in the contrary, yeah, yeah, and we did really contract over a few times, but there were where would the contract specifically said that they didn't they weren't going to put it in any specific show there, they didn't know what show they're going to put it okay there's like building their library, probably something like that is it? Um when they need the time, I think it was a year it wasn't exclusive economics if you don't even ask, I'm not sure you know, I think it was I think it was exclusive, okay, but I'm going allows the likes of the music for a good year for you you can use it anywhere else for that exclusive deal interesting ok that's what let's go back way have a little bit of time here so we can go over that we have this in the indie band survival guide and we don't like to go into this because it tends to be complicated and time consuming but if you do a licensing deal there's a number of contract terms that are really important one of the key ones is whether it's exclusive or non exclusive if it's exclusive you can't use it for any other purpose they're paying this and they should be paying a premium for it and if they decide to go exclusives like oh you want an exclusive agreement well then it's acts are not exclusive it becomes less when we did it with disney was not exclusive so they were not exclusive right to use it for a certain amount of time on a certain set of shows and they license going back now now we can open it up because they have a little bit of time remember I said there were two types of copyright I don't know not some of some of you might be tuning in right now might be a new thing so we have to copy rights we have a copyright in the song composition that's the general thing that could be covered eight million times and then in the sound recording you need toe license both if you're doing this for video what's called the sink license in each of them are separate there's no statutory rate I said that right? Right statutory rate on this so there's no statutory maximum for what this is and you can you can actually say no you can refuse it now exclusive a non exclusive is a big one doing it by region is another the time period that you license it is another that here yeah, yeah and then, uh the various uses they could put it to you can actually specify that in the contractor and another really big one is if they specify it is a work for hire that means they're just taking the copyright off your hands it's like thanks for our song which it wasn't any of that at least that that's that's the one that would work with the company that actually was it's in the business of trying to get licenses. Yes, yes. Ok, but yeah, right. Well, we need more so some specifics and everything. But yes, the idea would be you're curious about like the royalties that would generate if it were tied to a documentary that was played all over the place. So that is the kind of stuff that would get caught up in your performance rights organization like pepper being meyer if you're so are you in one of those? Yes and you register the songs yes, the songs registered and they need to be registered twice like we talked about, I need to register them twice it was still there and then on and then you should also do sound exchange for the for the sound recording you may as well, because it may be streamed somewhere you don't know probably less likely generally with film it's not considered to be streaming right and it's possible they have amusing it's true thing, and uh and then it's possible that you could discover it upon intended uh oh, and you could then and then and but asked hampton or being my didn't discover it, and then uh then you would want to go after one of those programs and that that's your basis of your question god. Ok, well, maybe we could talk about that later is thea other thing you can do is I don't know they don't want to be tied down to both telling you how it's going to be used because then they have to go back to you and re negotiate they don't do that or reported because that's that's that's trouble for them. You could ask for that if it really came down to it, but your best bet is just work through your performance rights organizations and do it literally do these internet searches do those internet alerts based on your name if they're required to put in the credits which is that there's one more he could contact them what is that I tried I always like going to the easy one from a guest in the chat room on the reverse if you're buying a license to cover a song and you estimate a certain amount such as thirty coffee sold what happens if you sell more than those thirty coffee you can't go less than one hundred on harry fox at least right? But you then you if you sell mori was helping you gotta go back you've got to go back and buying them ok and if you're wondering how you're going to get in trouble if you don't they may not find out I mean it's a big world out there none of this no I mean this is law and the law says you're supposed to pay nine point one cents for coffee but just just like you're not sure if they're going to use it even on a major tv thing that they don't know if you're selling a handful more copies than you should and that's saying you should try and get around it I'm saying you should you look you guys air in the music business now you should pay everybody for what you use and on the flip side you should get paid for everything that you're entitled to because you own this stuff but it's a good problem the half so if they say more than thirty yeah that's great, fantastic! And then congratulations get renewed license it, get it! Get another batch. Yeah, I have a question here. I know that you mentioned about giving out demo cds and waste distribute them and keith wants to know is it a good idea to give out demo cds to other bands at gigs? How can sort of use other bands were playing, whether other bands you're a fan of, how can you use them to your advantage and promotion? Oh, absolutely, there's quite a few ways you could do that. It's it's usually a good idea, although I think first of all, that some bands make mistakes of marketing first two musicians because that's all their friends that say that is not the place to start that is not the focus of your marketing unless you're a musician's band which there's there are some of those but that's not a huge market you're going after the mainstream market that's where you're going to sell more of your music or by mainstream I mean your audience. I mean, we know our audience for horn powered geek rock are geeks, and so if there's geeks out there we like to reach them, it works right, but they're not necessarily musician geeks now that said other musicians can get you a lot of things. First of all, you can share in their audience. If there's any similarities, you could do the cross promotion thing we talked about basically, two sessions ago. You, khun, do other types to go work together, like gigs. You can open for each other, or you can create what we like to call booking cartel, which we're going to talk about later, and you can also do collaboration projects, and, I mean, actually, the list is fairly long. You don't know the context that everybody has their musicians, after all, and so sometimes you can really help look each other up, but the music helps. But if you're starting with that, and if your main marketing is about that, we're going to talk about marketing a little later. You know, we're going to aim it right, square, the fans.