Legal or illegal? I'm an affiliate with itunes and sell their cd's, songs, etc. On my website can i have a demo mp3 playing of a song and next to it buy it now button linking to the itunes affiliate website.
If the song is subject to copyright law you would have to get permission from the owner before publicly distributing it. -- Nathan Enns
From the RIAA website: I couldn't actually find the "copyright section" they reference on their site, but these links should shed some light on fair use: Stamford Law Wikipedia From reading that and other info it seems that the "fair use" of music samples is open to interpretation. Theres no outright law that specifically addresses this type of usage. If you are able to argue that your implementation of music samples constitutes fair use then you should be fine, however it would be advisable to acquire a license and/or consult the RIAA etc just to be sure.
This is what I don't understand....so by what was said by the RIAA, sites like Amazon.com got permission from 20,000 artists to use 10 second clips of each song? I find that incredibly hard to believe.
No, sites like Amazon got permission from the few organizations (like RIAA, BMI, etc...) that hold the distribution rights to these songs. Very few musicians with contracts actually hold the rights to their music. Fair use almost never applies when there is money involved. Since the intent of the clips would be to get people to buy through the affliate link then it would not be fair use. (Even though you are using the clip to try to sell the song).
Well... there is another way! If you are using Amazon they recently (in the last year?) released an MP3 widget that will allow you to play the ~30 second snippits of the songs. This way you are totally in the clear as it is Amazon that is playing/hosting the music and they are all legit to do it. Now the iTunes method is a bit more of a hack but much cooler. Using the API (yes, iTunes has an API!) you can get the url for the previews that are played inside the iTunes store. Use those URLs on your site and you are golden there too. If you want the details on how to do this check out my recently published book about the iTunes Affiliate Program at http://masteringitunes.com FYI - I thought this was such a good question I used it in the FAQ of the book.