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Producing a not for sale promotional CDDate: February 3, 2012 by Michael Main  Views: 5004
Dear Colleagues:
Over the years, we have had several of our concerts professionally recorded. Recordings are achived, for "study purposes". My Board has suggested the possibility of putting together a short, promotional CD (20-30 minutes) of some of our best pieces from these past concert CD's. We will not be selling them...rather, the idea is to distrubute them free of charge to potential donors (mostly corporate) to give these people a better picture of who we are as a choral organization in our community.
I have produced CD's "for sale" with other choirs and understand the process regarding royalties and fees. Again, this CD would be produced from achived recordings, "not for sale"...and it will be distributed to a handful of people/businesses. So, my question. Is there any 'wiggle room' regarding royalties/fees given the nature of such a project?
Any advice would be most appreciated.
Michael Main, Artistic Director/Conductor
The Arts Chorale of Winchester
www.artschoralewinchester.org
Replies (12): Threaded | Chronological
John Howell on February 3, 2012 7:40pm
Hi, Michael. The simple answer is "no." There is no wiggle room in the requirements of the copyright law. Unless, of course, you put only public domain music in public domain editions on your CD.
Recording royalties are due for all copies "manufactured and distributed." Distributing them for free for promotional use does not circumvent that requirement. What you can do, however, is petition the copyright owner of each copyrighted work for permission to do what you wish to do. They may agree and they may not, and it is entirely up to them.
However, the fees might not be as much as you think. Check on the Harry Fox website and work out an estimate.
All the best,
John
Michael Main on February 4, 2012 6:09am
Thanks John...as I suspected. And YOU were the first person I expected to reply...read your comments/replies all the time! We do have some public domain selections and a couple of commissions from which to choose. Will contact Harry Fox to calculate cost on my other choices.
All Good Things,
Michael~
on February 5, 2012 1:56pm
I have a SongFile account at Harry Fox and I ran some numbers just to give an idea what these rates are. I used a small release of 50 CDs.
First I queried the SongFile database. I used David Childs "Weep No More", published by Santa Barbara Publishing (SA w/piano) which runs about 4.5 minutes.
the mechanical license for this at Harry Fox is $4.55
Harry Fox uses the current statutory royalty rate which is 9.1 cents for any work under 5 minutes multiplied by the number of units made.
(9.1 cents X 50 = 455 cents = $4.55)
but then Harry Fox tacks on a $15 surcharge for using their service so the total bill is $19.55 for licensing a work under 5 minutes.
So you can calculate $20/work to get the mechanical licenses at Harry Fox (given a small run of 50 units).
The real problem you may run into is when works are not listed in the Harry Fox database. This can happen more than occassionally for the more obscure titles you may have performed. Actually it's the more obscure publishers really. The ones that have not furnished their titles to Harry Fox.
When the work is not found in the database, Harry Fox says this...
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Please note that if the song is not in our database, it may take some time to receive a response to a request for licensing from the publisher (depending on the publisher.) We will aim to provide you with a response within two to four weeks. We will let you know if the song you requested can be licensed through Songfile.
--------------
My own personal opinion is, depending on what you meant by "handfull of people/businesses", if you are just talking about 10-15 units, than there is no reason to go through this at all. The license amounts are incredibly small. If you use my 15 units to calculate the royalty you would get $1.35 + $15 HF surcharge.
You're paying more in surcharges to Harry Fox than the actual license fee. That's my 2 cents as it were. For a non-commercial distribution of this small size, I don't think you're risking much liability.
Of course $20/work isn't much insurance to pay either.
on February 5, 2012 2:23pm
Very useful report, John. Thanks. I do have one question. It's true that you have to license each copyrighted song on an album separately. However, isn't licensing the CD itself a SINGLE transaction? In other words, don't you file a request licensing for a LIST of pieces? (I haven't dealt with "Songfile," so I honestly don't know.) And if that's true, then wouldn't there be ONE $15 processing fee, and not one for every licensed song?
John
on February 6, 2012 5:33am
Sadly not, John. Our new Christmas CD, which we did through Harry Fox for convenience, had $432 in licensing fees for 250 copies of about 20 songs, and an additional $257 in processing fees, over a dollar per CD.
David
on February 6, 2012 6:26am
Hi John,
The Harry Fox processing fee applies to each track. When you're on the SongFile website you have to indicate what your project is, a CD, for instance, and give its title and information about the performers, date of release, etc. Then you can add the songs to your cart. The fee isn't a flat $15 however. It reduces depending on the number of tracks. A 10 track listing for instance reduces the processing fee to $14/track ($140 in processing fees). It's not much of a savings.
But Harry Fox is beneficial because its a time-saver and as mentioned below by Mr Simon, it's a one-stop shopping experience. It's just like Ticketmaster, they tack on some big surcharges too.
--
The other thing I wanted to add was the royalty rate when a work is over 5 minutes in length. How is that calculated? I've clipped this from the HF website showing the calculation based on 1.75 cents per minute over 5 minutes.
---------------------------------------------
For songs over five minutes in length, the rate is based upon $.0175 (1.75 cents) per minute or fraction thereof as demonstrated below: 5:01 to 6:00 = $0.105 (6 X $.0175) 6:01 to 7:00 = $0.1225 (7 X $.0175) 7:01 to 8:00 = $0.14 (8 X $.0175) For example, if one were to make a recording of a song that is six minutes and thirty-eight seconds in length (6:38) and then manufacture and distribute 500 units, the total amount of royalties due is $56.25. ($0.1225 X 500 (units) = $61.25).
---------------------------------------------
on February 5, 2012 3:00pm
Although it might be more convenient, remember that it's not necessary to go through Harry Fox, no matter what publishers might tell you. Copyright holders are mandated by law to grant the mechanical license if you file the proper notice and pay the statutory fee, and they aren't permitted to set minimums or tack on additional charges. You must file within 30 days of making copies of your recording. Here's a handy FAQ page (.pdf). Here are the current royalty rates. It's 9.1c per song per copy for short pieces.
Harry Fox provides a useful service of online filing and one-stop shopping (which is what their fee pays for), but if you think they're too expensive, you can send actual letters with the mechanical license requests directly to the publishers and cut them out of the loop. (A fair number of publishers have mechanical license request forms online as well, I notice by perusing Google.)
on February 17, 2012 6:58am
I've worked on licensing for many CDs, so I just wanted to add that Harry Fox, while indeed a one-stop-shopping kind of place, is generally the most expensive option. I try to avoid using it as much as possible. I always contact the publisher first, and sometimes even the composer. This often takes a little longer, but has saved hundreds of dollars in licensing fees. Always worth a try!
on March 29, 2012 8:34am
I am working on producing a similar "not for sale" CD. My question is about what the licensing applies to....as a high school we purchase most of our music, so the license is needed from the sheet music publisher, correct? What about songs that I have (or a student has) arranged and therefore, there is no publisher involved?
on March 29, 2012 9:20am
Ann-Marie: The license is needed from the COPYRIGHT OWNER, which should be clearly stated on the music. You can certainly apply to individual publishers if you have an infinite amount of time and effort to spend, but Harry Fox is the one-stop shopping center.
Regarding an arrangement you or a student has written, it's a little more complicated. If the original song is still under copyright (not public domain) then you should have obtained permission to arrange before arranging it. If you did not, your arrangement is illegal. And in any case, the arrangement is the property of the copyright owner of the original song unless you have a written contract that states otherwise.
However, the recording royalty still goes to the owner of the copyright, NOT to the arranger, who has no claim on that royalty (unless there's a contract that says differently). Which means that you still need the recording license even if your arrangement is illegal. And just to make things interesting, the recording license INCLUDES the right to produce "a suitable arrangement"! (I did say that it was a little more complicated--not at all logical, just complicated!!)
Music in the public domain does not require a license to record, but the specific arrangement you have may have (probably DOES have) a separate copyright.
The Copyright Office of the Library of Congress has a number of clearly-written brochures about copyright matters that you should be aware of, and there's also a very good booklet written by Jay Althouse that's published (or at least used to be) by Alfred. You should really read up on the subject.
All the best,
John
P.S. I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. You might want to run this by your school's attorney.
on March 29, 2012 1:33pm
An excellent book for music teachers, specifically about rights, licensing and copyright law, is called THE TEACHER'S GUIDE TO MUSIC, MEDIA, and COPYRIGHT LAW, by James Frankel. It is published by Hal Leonard. Here's a link to Amazon: ( http://www.amazon.com/Teachers-Guide-Music-Media-Copyright/dp/1423443446/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333052850&sr=8-1 ) where it can be purchased for $24.99. I've found the book very invaluable as a resource to know what I can and cannot do, in a language I can understand (real man's English rather than legalese).
I've had mixed experiences asking for recording permission for copyrighted works, but admittedly I teach in Elementary School. Sometimes the publishers (whom I've gone to direct in most cases) have said, "sure, no problem" with the stipulation that I place certain information on the video or CD. Others have said, "sorry, no." When asked if I could make a video available to parents of students in a production, one company said, "sure, we want $1 each, and you have to have this statement on the video." (So I placed that statement in the program, and then videotaped that statement at the beginning of the video.)
Donna
on April 1, 2012 5:29pm
Dear Mr. Main,
My name is Mark Greenburg ad I am the president of Tresóna Multimedia. If you send me the material you want licensed, we will bulk license it for you through our account at HFA, and if it is less than 100 copies, we will pay the licensing fees for you out of pocket. We will be happy to set up your promotional album as a digital download as well, free of charge, and we will pay the licensing.
You can contact me through our switchboard at (877) 347-2543.
Mark Greenburg, President
Tresóna Multimedia, LLC
6336 N. 48th Place, Building B
Paradise Valley, AZ 85253
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