Is online music streaming illegal? I would like to allow my users to hear movie songs from my site. SmasHits.com has a simlilar service (http://ww.smashits.com/music/hindi-movie/play/songs/1183/Mann/14596/Mera-Mann-Kyon-Tumhe.html). I had contacted someother sites and was told that it is not legal to stream music online (like online radio stations), only providing them for download is illegal. Infact I was told that most producers encourage this, as it is a promotion for their movie. Can anyone please provide me some information on this?
Internet radio stations are required to pay royalties on the music they stream. So, as long as you make sure you do that, it's legal. I believe royalties are paid through a company called SoundExchange. See this article: http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2007/0...iscounted-music-royalties-to-small-webcasters
This is a very complicated subject. I have a local music site where I stream music from local bands. Before they upload any music they have to accept my Terms which states that I can store their MP3 on my server and stream the music on my site at that is all. If they accept this then they can't hold anything against you.
Like you say, the key is to get permission to play the music from the copyright holders. That works great with local bands - they get airtime and you get music. It's trickier to get that permission if you want to stream the Jonas Brothers or The Dark Knight soundtrack.
yes indeed the matter is not that easily to explain, well basically it comes to, no it is not illegal but you have to pay royalties to a agency that is appointed to it. In europe most countries have there own agency that collects the money, but since we are talking internet streaming, the question is where do you have to pay the royalties. We for example are living in Belgium, our servers are streaming from the UK and the radio station is based in Germany. Well i took the lowest rates, and that was with GEMA in Germany. So short answer to your question is, no it is not illegal as long as you pay royalties.
Trouble with this kind of thing is, you'd not get into any trouble until you start making money. If you made some actual cash, different royalty offices would try to come down on you. A noted by other posters, you should check with the national royalty collection agency, copyright bureau or the likes. Pandora isn't allowed to stream outside the US, because they've only been able to make a deal there. You could read up on that case, that might help you a bit... Last.fm and Imeem have deals with major labels. Since you are not giving us more details is hard to say anything really useful, but there are fair use rules and regulations everywhere, that would make it possible in a given context. There are also rules about what amount you are allowed to play (preview), some places as much as 30 seconds... I wouldn't count on the advice from fellow DPers on a subject like this. No offense to anyone. Anyway, I'm not sure.
Thanks to all the replies. I am from India and my site caters to only a small region. Also I won't be streaming music of any band (Actually the number of bands here is very few). On the other hand, every movie released has atleast 3-4 songs in it. Hence I plan to stream those songs. Now the main problem is that I don't know whom to contact regarding the royalty issue. The producer of the movie or the music company that distributes the cds.
I dont think so its necessary to get permission to STREAM music, unless you let users download what you stream.
well i think best is to inform your self with bodies like http://www.indianmi.org/ they know where to be and what to do. Peter
royalties are what the artists and record lable want in return they will let you broadcast there music without sueing your arse
yea i always hear this issue on internet radio. but i think if your doing it for your site which caters to your friends and do not make money off it, you dont need to worry. they got bigger fishes to catch than you.