Selling CD's for fundraisers may not be so easy to administer; copyright issues. Anyone out there want to address this one?

Hi, Lori and Friends.  Oh boy!  The subject of making CDs as fundraisers JUST came up on the Community Music List yesterday and has generated discussion already.  I'll attempt to condense it all in relatively few words.

 

FIRST:  Fair Use permits the making of ONE archival recording of a concert, but does not permit making or distributing any additional copies of that recording.  So any additional copies do come under the provisions of the copyright law and must comply with them.  (And no, it doesn't matter whether you sell them or give them away; recording licenses are needed for all copies "made and distributed.")  Don't even think about making end runs around that simple fact.  And of course I'm talking about U.S. law, the only one I'm remotely familiar with.  I am NOT an expert, just a working musician who tries to keep the basics straight--and yes, I've read all the brochures from the U.S. Copyright Office and the Music Publishers Association, and you should too!

 

SECOND:  Yes, you need to have a license for EACH copyrighted song (or copyrighted edition or arrangement of a public domain song) that you record, make, and distribute.  You do not need one for any public domain piece you record.

 

THIRD:  The Music Publishers themselves have set up and rely on the Harry Fox Agency in NYC to handle the issuance of the necessary licenses and the collection and distribution of the license fees.  You MAY of course contact every publisher individually, but many of them will simply refer you to Harry Fox.  HF does charge a certain amount for their services, but it's well worth it to have everything done properly.  (There are in fact other folks who claim to do the same thing at no charge, but I don't know anything about them.)

 

FOURTH:  Unlike almost everything else in the copyright law, the cost of licenses is statutory--which means that it is set out in the law and is not a matter of individual negotiations.  That cost was ridiculously low for a very long time, but at present it is reviewed periodically and raised every year or so.  There is (I'm pretty sure of this) one flat fee for any song less than 5 minutes in length, which may be around 10 cents per copy manufactured, and a separate way to figure the fee for anything lasting longer than 5 minutes.  All this is available from the Copyright Office or Harry Fox.

 

FIFTH:  Also unlike almost everything else, the recording license is mandatory after a work has once been recorded with the copyright owner's permission.  In other words, your application for a license CAN NOT be turned down.  (True story:  Back in the '60s my quartet, "The Four Saints," was doing a medley of songs from "Music Man," and applied for the license to record it.  Meredith Willson's people tried to prevent our recording "Trouble in River City," saying that it could only be recorded as an instrumental, but they were wrong and could not prevent us from recording or refuse to grant us the license!)

 

SIXTH:  Speaking of that medley, EVERY SEPARATE SONG in a medley is treated separately for copyright purposes, so if a medley includes 5 songs it requires 5 licenses and 5 fee payments.

 

SEVENTH:  Live concert recordings are difficult to get high quality on, but very easy to record.  Studio recordings, in intensive sessions that allow for repeated "takes" on each song, can almost always be higher quality.  But few condutors have spent enough time in a recording studio to understand the process, and fewer choristers understand what is expected from them.

 

And EIGHTH:  Whether or not you can actually raise funds by selling CDs is never guaranteed.  You have to make a realistic estimate of how many copies you can actually sell over a reasonable length of time, and stack that up against the costs of the recording, post-production, art work and copy, manufacturing, and shipping.  As my daughter the math teacher points out, "profit" does not equal "income," it equals "income" minus "expenses."  With my college show ensemble we had a routine of recording songs from our current touring show in the Fall, getting delivery some time in January, and selling them as souvenir albums on our Spring shows.  But my goal was for the sales each year to be enough to pay the up-front costs of producing the following year's album, NOT to make a real profit from them.  And we usually met that goal, but of course we did a LOT of shows during the year!  And once you turn your repertoire over, you no longer have what your audiences hear in concert on your albums.

 

Happy to answer (or attempt to answer) any further questions.  I had the advantages of having worked in recording studios from the late '50s through the '60s, including major studios in L.A. and NYC, so I knew how to produce our albums.  Many choral conductors lack that experience.  And I was ALSO lucky enough to have a recording engineer who was a musician, who learned what I wanted and would accept, and I could trust him when he said either "you'd better try that one again right away" or "that one is worth listening to"!  Perfection is pretty ellusive.  And remember that it takes just as much time to listen back to a take as it does to record it in the first place!

All the best,

John