Wedding Vids Copyright Music!

[tkelly16]

Ok, I’m sure this has been discussed before but I didn’t have the patience to look through the forum. What is the exact ethics on wedding videos and using copyrighted music? I’ve never really looked into the legalities but I don’t want to be paying $3,000 to license a song for a $1,000 wedding video. Is there easy ways to get permission to use the songs. I know what I’m doing now… which is probably what most of us do. But I was wondering if anyone had any experiences with this issue. Opinions are welcome.

[Endeavor]

Actually, not only has this been discussed, it’s probably the most brought up topic. Its all over the forum and I doubt any of us want to hash it out again. I would recommend searching the forum after all.

[Anonymous]

Hi tkelly16,

There are many musicians that would be glad to help you out for a much smaller fee.

I compose and record original music myself (one of my many hobbies). If you just want something short for the DVD menu or something like that, then I may be able to help you myself. I’m very busy, so if you want something longer than a couple of minutes you should try asking on one of the more popular music forums such as Harmony Central or Music Player….and tell them that “Dave the Rave” send you X-D

Cheers,
Dave

[Anonymous]

Yes, this is a royal pain in the edit. I have one basic rule; if it goes to a client, music tracks are from a “Royalty Free Library”. This goes for video on the web, also. Never get yourself into a position of having to “look over your shoulder”.

[tkelly16]

Kewl, sorry bout the repetitive question, I did manage to find a couple of posts on the subject. It was more of an opinion type of thing than an actual quesion. I know what I do and I know it’s legal so I’m confident with my work, I was just posting an opinion type of thing. Thanks for the help guys.

[Anonymous]

You cannot legally use copyrighted music in a video production that you are charging a fee for. It doesn’t matter if you or the client owns the cd.

That being said – the quality of the royalty free music available typically is substandard. It just isn’t the same as the original recording that most people may be familiar with. Most video production companies recognize that the quality of their work would be substantially reduced by using royalty free music, and use the original song in violation of copyright law. In doing so, they play the odds that there are much bigger fish in the sea for the RIAA to catch, and it would be highly unlikely for a small-time video production company to be sued for copyright infringment.

Honestly, the RIAA and the artists need to find an easier way for a video production company to pay for the rights to use in their work…..LEGALLY. Until that occurs, most video production companies will continue to violate copyright law.

[birdcat]

mvctoys Wrote:

You cannot legally use copyrighted music in a video production that you are charging a fee for. It doesn’t matter if you or the client owns the cd.

Actually it doesn’t matter whether you are charging or not – You are not allowed to use it period. The one exception (I believe – don’t quote me) is for your own personal use (like vacation videos or your own wedding) but there are probably restrictions there as well (like you can’t show it to your mother-in-law or some other such nonsense).

mvctoys Wrote:

the quality of the royalty free music available typically is substandard.

I cannot disagree more – I am on a very strict budget (I do this as a hobby) and have been able to amass a very nice collection of royalty-free music from a wealth of sources (other threads on this board cover this) including free sources (some require attribution like Kevin McLeod, some don’t like Twisted Tracks free giveaways) as well as cheap sources such as eBay (Impact Music Library, TracksNow).

For a bit more money you can get SonicFire Pro which is very high quality and very easy to use. You could also look at Acid Planet and see who would be willing there or even better, download the free Acid version (limits you to ten tracks) and make your own.

[Anonymous]

I suppose everyone has their own creative opinion’s on what’s good, and what isn’t. That’s why we are all different! The services you mentioned fall into the sub-standard catagory, IMHO. It just isn’t the same as the original recording. I listened to the Top 10 songs on Acid Planet, and they are more like cheap karaoke versions. I am quite confident that my clients would find them to be inferrior to the original recordings they are familiar with. Of course, that reflects on me and my business. I’ll stick with the originals.

[birdcat]

mvctoys Wrote:

I suppose everyone has their own creative opinion’s on what’s good, and what isn’t. That’s why we are all different! The services you mentioned fall into the sub-standard catagory, IMHO. It just isn’t the same as the original recording. I listened to the Top 10 songs on Acid Planet, and they are more like cheap karaoke versions. I am quite confident that my clients would find them to be inferrior to the original recordings they are familiar with. Of course, that reflects on me and my business. I’ll stick with the originals.

As for opinion on what would be good or sub-standard, I think you will find more opinions than the number of works that exist. I don’t know if the "Top 10" on Acid Planet can be used as a watermark for all the work there but that’s your choice. As for using the original copyrighted works in your video, that’s your perogative but at some point it can (and very well might) come back a bite you somewhere you might not like. Douglas Spotted Eagle, a grammy award winner, amazing video editor/producer and man I admire greatly, mentioned in a thread on another board of videographers being sued for this practice. IMHO – While clients may continually demand top 40 pieces in their videos, it will become increasingly difficult to do so in the future.

[Anonymous]

mvctoys Wrote:

I suppose everyone has their own creative opinion’s on what’s good, and what isn’t. That’s why we are all different! The services you mentioned fall into the sub-standard catagory, IMHO. It just isn’t the same as the original recording. I listened to the Top 10 songs on Acid Planet, and they are more like cheap karaoke versions. I am quite confident that my clients would find them to be inferrior to the original recordings they are familiar with. Of course, that reflects on me and my business. I’ll stick with the originals.

Interesting!

As like you and a lot of other people posting here, I respect personal opinions too. Although… I have to agree with "birdcat". There are a lot of sources out there that offer royalty free music that have a very high quality sound. I personally use Smartsound and I find it very well done. It comes in 44K stereo CD quality giving you a wide dynamic range, it sounds GREAT over my 6.1 surround sound system and they have a huge selection that you can customize the length to fit the requirement you need.

I guess my question to you is, What is your interpretation of good sound versus sub-standard sound?

Just because royalty free music isn’t on the "Top 10 Billboard Chart doesn’t make it sub-standard. It does make it legal though. 😉 OK I admit that I’m not always a law bidding citizen either because sometimes the clients ask for copyrighted songs to be used so I just do it. (That’s a whole other string that was beat to death on this forum.)

IMO however, video works (especially weddings) can seem like a clich when you use existing copyrighted music. When you look around on other wedding videographers sites, you can run across the same song being used 4 or 5 times.

RAM

[Anonymous]

I bought a few Smartsound "CDs", only to find that they are recorded in a proprietary format. I wasn’t able to find a way to convert them to a traditional wav or mp3 file, so I have never used them.

[Anonymous]

mvctoys Wrote:

I bought a few Smartsound "CDs", only to find that they are recorded in a proprietary format. I wasn’t able to find a way to convert them to a traditional wav or mp3 file, so I have never used them.

Yeah that’s correct! They have this main application that does all of the dirty work and the music CD’s themselves just contain the special formatted files this main app uses. The final results however do come out as wave files. I edit with Adobe PP and there is a plugin that they sell which allows me to do what I need to do right from within PP itself.

If you go to their website http://smartsound.com/ and click on the turtorials there, they explain how it all works together.

The other thing that I didn’t mention either is that you’ll need your wallet. But really I think you will be very impressed.

RAM

[birdcat]

mvctoys Wrote:

I bought a few Smartsound "CDs", only to find that they are recorded in a proprietary format. I wasn’t able to find a way to convert them to a traditional wav or mp3 file, so I have never used them.

Along with SonicFire Pro (whcih uses the SmartSound technology) – There are other video applications which make use of this as well. One in particular is Pinnacle’s Studio – So you can use these SmartSound discs with that if you have it. (The full list of SS enabled apps is on their website). They also offer an upgrade price if you own one of the SS enabled products plus they will allow you to use any of the existing SS files you might have from them (they helped me integrate my old Pinnacle stuff so I can use that as well for no extra $$$).

[birdcat]

mvctoys Wrote:

I bought a few Smartsound "CDs", only to find that they are recorded in a proprietary format. I wasn’t able to find a way to convert them to a traditional wav or mp3 file, so I have never used them.

Actually – So would I – Don’t want to start a bidding war but which ones are they and what would you take for them?

[chrisuk]

http://www.videomaker.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3276

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