Hello everyone! This is a little bit beyond website legal issues, but I thought someone in here might be able to help me... I'm looking into a possible business venture which would involve reprinting music lyrics onto t-shirts. I know that I'd have to get permission from the publisher to reprint lyrics, but it seems that these "publishers" are nothing more than pseudo-names for the songwriter him/herself. Does anyone know of an organization I can obtain permission from, or would I HAVE to get permission from each artist?? Thank you so much for your time and help... - Brett
It is down to the individual set ups but you may be able to get a blanket permission from the record label for the songs their artists have released whilst on their books though undoubtably they would charge a fair amount for such cover
There are music associations (see ASCAP) which deal with this problem by having a set amount for a license fee. They represent numerous artists so that you don't have to individually negotiate and deal with every individual artist. It's not always so simple though but why don't you go to their web site and start reading on the topic and it will help you. Good luck.
Slinky is right. You can get an entertainment lawyer that specializes in music to probably assist you with contracts and how this all works.
Actually, you don't even need a lawyer. There are mechanical licenses that allow you, Joe Business Owner, to easily obtain a license from the clearinghouse that has already been agreed to as the agency to grant you a license. This is how ringtone sites that sell licensed content operate.
Yeah..I didn't say it's required but certainly assistance from someone with first hand knowledge would be a benefit. Also if you want to have a legitimate business doing stuff like this you might want to have a lawyer on retainer just in case.
Most of the record lables do not have rights to the lyrics, in fact if you ask ASCAP and RIAA they will probably tell you they cannot provide permission. The organization to ask in the US is the NMPA. They aren't the only one, but they are the biggest.
Are music lyrics not like books that they lose their copyright after a certain no of years? So you could at least print old classic songs. Some of the best anyway (or is that just me.... )
Yes they do, but the same timeframe is involved. Anything registered after 1977 has a term of the author's life + 70 years (if there is more than one author then it is the last surviving author). Anything registered before that can have a total copyright term of 28-75 years depending on whether the copyright was extended. So for the most part you are talking about really old music, not classic rock.
I thought there was a news story about beatles songs expiring very soon or is that just the rights on the music themselves. Purely from memory the story was that McCartney or maybe it was one of the others were whinging about the loss of royalties on the basis that the less famous would suffer. Choose your own take on that I guess. Some bealtes lyrics would probably make good T-shirt slogans I guess.
As far as the Beatles, some might start expiring as soon as 2012. Most of those songs are under British copyright law which has a term of 50 years. However, there is a strong movement by the UK music industry to alter the copyright legislation to match the US. That would add at least another 20 years to the copyright on those songs. When you consider the recordings (not the lyrics/sheet music) it is further complicated by the fact that some of the Beatles songs have US recording rights which puts those songs into to different copyright terms for the recordings.