Sync Licensing Services?

[Colin]

Unsure whether this belongs in this forum, or General Advice, or...

College dance company wants to record a show for streaming (live streaming is not, as of now, on the table). It's all copyrighted music. Does anyone have experience with a sync rights service that will do the legwork negotiating with rightsholders?

 

[DaveySimps]

Does your college have and ASCAP license? You might already have access to some contact info already if you do. This is one of the more common routes if the material is represented there.

~Dave

 

[sk8rsdad]

ASCAP doesn't handle grand rights so any music that is recorded for a performance needs to be licensed directly from the music publisher and recording company. Streaming is particularly messy since licensing rules depend on the country, and the internet is everywhere. Fortunately, many of the big streaming services (YouTube, Facebook, etc.) have their own ASCAP licensing and mechanisms whereby users can obtain permission to use the music, sometimes by letting the original copyright holder monetize it.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on a primetime TV drama.

 

[yert33]

I have a similar question regarding an established band playing live for a private, YouTube live-streamed charity event. The band plays (mostly?) original, supposedly copyrighted material and is OK with the live stream. How does one avoid the YouTube copyright strikes in this case? What kind of copyright applies in this case?

 

[MRW Lights]

I have a similar question regarding an established band playing live for a private, YouTube live-streamed charity event. The band plays (mostly?) original, supposedly copyrighted material and is OK with the live stream. How does one avoid the YouTube copyright strikes in this case? What kind of copyright applies in this case?

Is the band or their representative the custodian of their Master rights? If anything is not original and they have the rights to play the music, they may or may not have the rights for public performance, capture, broadcast or monetization. You should indemnify yourself/company in writing from associated litigation resulting from the event. The event should indemnify you by stating in writing that at the time of performance to your knowledge the band or associated representatives have/are responsible for the appropriate rights and that you are simply facilitating the technical execution of the capture/stream.

Also not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV.....

 

[FMEng]

This is just my understanding, and I'm not a lawyer. Copyright is one thing, but it seems like the Youtube computers need to have written or audio material to compare it to before it gets flagged. Has the band licensed and published the music? If so, you have a problem. If they wrote it but haven't published it, Youtube won't have any way to flag it.

Once the video is flagged, the rights holder has to have a human review the video and decide whether to challenge it. If the author has given you permission to use the music, then you could put a statement to that effect at the end of the video. Whether it would work, or not, I don't know.

That's sort of how One License for churches does it. We put a license number with a boilerplate statement, for a few seconds at the end. We still get flagged occasionally, but have not had any challenges.

 

[josh88]

I will also add, be careful that you don't just get bilked out of money by reps that sell you something and don't actually know what they are doing. Ascap supposedly sold us Grand Rights for streaming until we called them on it, and BMI was trying to figure out how to do the same thing but spent 4 months stringing us along before finally finally saying that what we were asking them about they couldn't actually do.

I'm not saying any of it is malicious but there are definitely some confused reps dealing with some new scenarios. BMI finally bounced us to a digital rights manager who eventually said youtube and facebooks contracts for one off streams likely cover the scenario we were looking at.