moo sick

[the_4thb]

Does anyone reading this know who to ask about legality of and royalty fees associated with recording other people's songs to which they still hold the copyright? I'm playing at open mike at the Mill on the sixteenth and they usually record a tape of you playing and give it to you. I was thinking it would be fun to make a CD from the recording to

Comments

[kusiak]

Being that I compose hip hop, a lot of my music contains samples of other peoples' works. I live this. So maybe this will help:

Playing the cover song at the Mill is illegal if you make money off of what a judge deems too similar to the artist's original work. So the general rule of thumb is this: if the owner doesn't know about it, it's okay. If they DO know about it, it's okay. The reason being, you're not making that much of off their work anyway. It would cost them more money to take you to court than it would to just let you make your $200 bucks. I plan to sell an album containing samples from over a dozen various artists. Even if I sell 500 albums, it's under their radar. Even IF they found out Mr. Noname did this, going to the law would cost them MORE money than just letting me steal their music. Again, that's if anyone at that level even HEARS my album.

I say do it and don't worry about it. If you get huge in the future, remember: there won't ever be any proof that you made a hundred bucks off of their song.... well, if you don't let anyone charge on a credit card, that is.

[the_4thb]

A very realistic and helpful view. And yeah, if I just take cash, there's no way to prove I didn't just give all the CDs away.