August 13, 2007

Licensing Music for Your Dance Videos

There are thousands upon thousands of videos on the Internet representing all styles and genres of dance. Yet what percentage of the sound tracks on these videos are legal?

My guess is that a very large percentage of these sound tracks are not legal. In other words, dancers, dance companies and dance instructors may not have secured the proper legal rights to use the included music in their videos. It is probable that the necessary rights were obtained for using the music during a dance performance, but music played during live performances is done pursuant to different licensing arrangements than music distributed on the Internet.

I don't believe that dancers and dance companies can continue to distribute Internet videos with music to which they don't have the appropriate legal rights. I'm saying this for legal, ethical and practical purposes.

The legal and ethical reasons are simple: Why would you want to use somebody else's work without proper authorization and why should musical artists not receive compensation for their work?

And from a practical perspective dancers, dance companies, instructors, dance filmmakers and others cannot experiment with monetizing their videos on the Internet if some of their content--in this case music--is not being used in a legal manner. Put simply, you'll get sued as soon as you start making any money or maybe even before you generate any revenue.

Am I wrong or right about my above contention? If I'm wrong, how are dancers going about the process of licensing the music that they use in their videos?

The High Cost of Licensing Music for Your Dance Videos

I am in the very early stages of learning about the process of licensing music for your dance videos. So what I write below is definitely not meant to be authoritative in any way--I may be flat-out wrong in some instances. I just want to point out what appears to be the astronomical fees involved in licensing copyrighted music in traditional ways. I'm about to do more research on this topic and if you have experience licensing music or are an expert in this field, I'd be interested in speaking with you.

Depending upon the music that you want to license for Internet use, the process of obtaining the appropriate rights can be complicated and expensive.

Let's take a piece of copyrighted music that you want to use in your video. For starters, you'll need two basic types of licenses:

1) The rights to the music composition--the lyrics and the notes, and

2) The rights to the sound recording--the actual music as recorded by an artist or group.

You may need other rights as well. For a detailed overview of this process, read this "Podcasting Legal Guide."

You'll first need the rights to reproduce and distribute the musical composition. You do this by going to the Harry Fox Agency. According to the "Podcasting Legal Guide," the cost for this license will be 9.1 cents per download per song. So if your song is downloaded 1,000 times, you would owe $91 (($0.91 x 1000).

You may also need the rights to publicly perform a copyrighted work, which can be done through organizations such as ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC. (I'm avoiding the definition of a "public performance" because I'm confused by this concept). In any case, ASCAP charges podcasters (continuing examples given in "Podcasting Legal Guide") 1.85% of revenue plus 0.06 cents per session. So for 1,000 downloads your cost would be $60 ($0.06 x 1000) plus 1.85% of any revenue.

So let's say you needed both of the above two licenses. Your cost for 1,000 downloads would be $150.00. That's an insanely high amount. Say tens of thousands of people watch your video with the licensed music? You could quickly owe thousands of dollars.

Pursuing Less Expensive Approaches to Licensing Music

Whether my numbers above are more or less accurate or not, it seems painfully clear that dancers and dance companies will want to seek alternative ways of finding and gaining rights to music that is used in their videos. These videos might be of performances, rehearsals, dance instruction or in dance-on-camera productions.

There are a number of approaches that you can take:

1) Work directly with musicians that are creating and playing their own work.

2) Use musical compositions/sound tracks that are in the public domain.

3) Use works that have Creative Commons licenses

4) Use inexpensive, royalty-free music.

Next Post: Online Music Links

Within the next few days, I'll write a follow-up to this post with links to websites that include libraries of low-cost/royalty-free/creative commons-licensed music that you can use in your Internet videos.

For starters, you can visit the Open Media Directory: A free resource for finding legal, podsafe music and video.

Questions

How do you license music for your regular dance performances?

How do you license music for the Internet distribution of your videos?

Have you used the Internet to find music from unsigned bands?

Have you used specific websites to find royalty-free, low-cost or Creative Commons-licensed music?

When you work directly with musicians, do you get the rights to use their music on videos distributed via the Internet as well as during live performances?

Posted by Doug Fox at 7:22 AM - Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

October 17, 2006

Merce Cunningham Puts Music Selection in Audience Hands

Merce Cunningham Dance Company performed eyeSpace last week at The Joyce Theater.

Randomness in music selection was taken to new heights by the master of randomness. Audience members were encouraged to bring their own iPods loaded with Mikel Rouse’s eyeSpace score (freely available via the Merce Cunningham website for ticket buyers) or those without iPods were provided with one when arriving at The Joyce theater.

Apollinaire Scherr wrote in Newsday before opening of eyeSpace:

Up until "eyeSpace," audience members at least were listening to the same music, whatever they each made of it. Now, they may be watching the same dance, "but they're having a private experience with the sound," Rouse explains. "What happens when you ask people to have both a shared and a private experience at the same time? I don't think that's exactly happened before. The question is, what is a theatrical experience?"

I just did Google news search to see what the reviewers had to say about eyeSpace and its iPod innovation:

Tobi Tobias for Bloomber writes in "Merce Cunningham's IPod Tricks Fall Flat":

Now, with ``eyeSpace,'' Cunningham is inviting his audience to be interactive, a tactic that presumably engages the art-resistant. This from an artist who stuck to his esoteric aesthetic for decades, often with glorious results.

The choreography for ``eyeSpace'' is even more discouraging than the sound gimmickry.

Deborah Jowitt in The Village Voice opens her review:

Merce Cunningham and John Cage were using chance procedures to shuffle music and dance sequences before Steve Jobs was born. With Cunningham's new eyeSpace, the audience gets to play. We hear half of Mikel Rouse's score, variously shuffled, on iPods. Text sung and spoken by the dancers (sample: "I almost lost my foot, but I didn't lose my foot") emerges from a murmur of instruments and other sounds. Rouse and Stephan Moore also generate noise on the theater's speakers—mostly street and subway clamor. Sitting there in our headphones we might be on the subway, except that no musical favorites cocoon us from commotion.

This aural experience is somewhat like life; the visual one isn't.

John Rockwell for the New York Times writes in "You'll Take the Dance You're Given, but You Can Call the Tune":

...“eyeSpace,” accompanied by a Mikel Rouse score set to shuffle mode on individual iPods, was [a] novelty, and an appealing one.

Mr. Cunningham, now 87, has long been fascinated with technological innovations, and there can be a whiff of gimmickry in his use of them. The new “eyeSpace” worked well, with one reservation. Mr. Rouse’s score blends rock and folk-rockish vocals with electronic instrumentals and an urban soundscape. The handsome blue costumes and backdrop — blue against an intensely saturated red — are by Henry Samelson. The 12 dancers twisted and gyrated, mostly in subgroups of diminishing size, though one’s attention was sometimes distracted by the novelty of Mr. Rouse’s presentation of his music and by the audience fumbling with the iPods, most of which were on loan from the lobby.

Click here for more reviews on Google.

Posted by Doug Fox at 6:20 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 20, 2006

Last.fm and the Future of Dance Videos

I think that dancers and dance companies are missing out on such a wonderful opportunity to use the Internet to reach larger audiences, build excitement for upcoming performances and generate revenue from online sales. I've said this before, but what made me think more about this missed opportunity is the Last.fm website.

Last.fm is a social networking site for music fans. Users can tag and categorize songs, create customized radio stations, write their own journals and join communities with those who share similar musical tastes. You can also have your playlists automatically displayed on your Last.fm profile page for others to view, listen to the radio stations of your friends and see which songs and musical groups are the most popular.

Last.fm, like MySpace, is simply a great way for musicians to build audiences for their music within the context of community-focused websites -- the fastest growing sector of the web.

There's nothing comparable in the dance world. Dancers and dance companies don't post their videos to the web so there can be no community-driven marketplace where dance fans can watch dance clips, tag videos and form communities with others.

But imagine if there were thousands of dance videos online. Dance enthusiasts could create customized TV channels with their favorite videos, share their channels with friends, and meet others with similar tastes. Such a service would enable dancers and dance companies to build larger audiences and at the same time create an online marketplace for selling dance videos.

One thing in particular that I don't understand is that there are many dance on camera film festivals around the world. This obviously means that thousands of dancers already have their works in digital format. So what is stopping them from uploading their videos to the Internet? Why are they not using these videos for promotional purposes? Why are they not trying to sell them online through Google Video and other services?

And in the bigger picture, the online universe is simply so incredibly large that it just doesn't make any sense to ignore it any longer.

I used to watch the TV game show "Let's Make a Deal" when I was younger. Contestants had to choose one of three doors. If they picked the right one, they won some wonderful prizes. If they picked the wrong door, they would end-up with some meaningless gift.

But imagine that before choosing a door, host Monty Hall said, "Now, we want you to choose one of these three doors. Before you choose a door, I want you to know that there is one million dollars behind door number two. OK, go ahead and choose a door."

What does the contestant do? He says, "I choose door number one."

I'm not saying that dancers are going to make a fortune anytime soon. But I am saying that there is a disconnect of massive proportions that does not make any sense. If there are millions of Internet users behind door number two. It is not logical to pick door number one.

Technorati Tags: dance, last.fm, myspace, web2.0

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March 13, 2006

Dancing Up a Storm with Gene Kelley

I enjoyed watching a mechanical umbrella performance done to "Singing in the Rain" designed by installation artist Peter William Holden (via Boing Boing).

Busby Berkeley choreographed dancers to mimic the motions of machines and modern inventions. “AutoGene” is the flipside of this. It’s a simple aesthetic looking robot composed of eight modified umbrellas mounted in a circular pattern. A cocktail of air hoses and electrical cables join these umbrellas to a central computer which enables “AutoGene” to produce a choreographed dance which erodes the machine's mechanical qualities.

And if you want more Singing in the Rain, watch this hip-hop dance take on this famous song in a Volkswagon TV commercial.

Posted by Doug Fox at 11:57 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 3, 2005

Where Are the Dance Podcasts?

It's good to see that in the visual and performing arts world audio podcasts are beginning to catch on.

Andrew Taylor has a post about some of these new podcasts:

- The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra has launched an E-Label version of its classics on iTunes. From the press release you can link to MSO's music on ITunes.

- The Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, Tennessee has a number of recent podcasts of exhibits at the Frist. I'm listening right now to one done by Exhibits Curator Mark Scala who is explaining a few works from the Hudson River School. He's giving a live tour and asking the audience questions as he discusses the paintings. Sounds interesting but I think I have to be looking at the paintings to benefit from this audio tour.

- GalleryCasts seems to be a new directory of art-related podcasts - there are currently four podcasts available.

- Stanford University has created Standford on iTunes, which includes a good number of audio files from lectures, music, and books and authors on its special section on iTunes - very impressive and very free.

So the question I have is when will the dance world join the podcasting fun? I think that video podcasts in particular would be a great way to promote upcoming dance performances.

Posted by Doug Fox at 4:47 PM - Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

October 11, 2005

Dancing on Mobile Phones

Artificial Life, a developer of mobile and Internet applications, is rolling-out the V-disco software for mobile phones in Hong Kong later this year. 3G mobile phone users will be able to stream selected songs from SONY MBG music library while watching dance avatars move to the beat in a mini 3D browser.

Posted by Doug Fox at 6:15 AM - Permalink | Comments (0)

October 10, 2005

The iPod Nano and Dance Mobs

Stefan Engeseth has a solution to help Apple overcome the negative publicity generated by battery problems with the new iPod Nano.

In a October 6, 2005 post, "'iPod Dance' - A nonstop music solution with a perpetual batterty," Stefan describes how human movement, in the form of dancing, can be harnessed to power the iPod Nanos.

He recommends that Apple kick-off a marketing campaign via flash dances that feature Madonna dancing in the streets of New York. Read Stefan's post and comments to get a better idea of his recommendation.

I've always been intrigued by the idea of flash dancers - also called mobile clubbing or smart mobs. The idea is straightforward: A group of people communicate via email, instant messaging or text messaging and agree to meet at a designated public space at a specific date and time. When they arrive, somebody plays music via a portable music player, everybody dances for, say, 15 minutes and everybody leaves. That's it.

But in its own way, it's a pretty revolutionary idea. This type of event could not take place before ubiquitous communication tools existed that enabled groups of people to instantaneously communicate and determine on their own when and where they would gather to dance. No need for a venue, no need for expensive marketing programs, no DJ to decide what music to play and, overall, no pre-planning of any type.

There have been a number of examples of smart dance mobs over the past 2-3 years. Here are some articles and examples:

- Mobile Clubbing at Liverpool Street Station

- Flash Dance promotion during South by Southwest Festival earlier this year in Austin, Texas

- "From Flash-Mob To Mo-Club" November 2004 post to Robin Good's blog

- Pictures from Argentine Tango Flash Mob in June 2004

Posted by Doug Fox at 8:20 AM - Permalink | Comments (1)

September 15, 2005

Dance with Cingular and iTunes

To promote its new cell phone that integrates Apple's iTunes software to play songs, Cingular has launched the Make Me Dance website.

They've created a fun Flash application (click "Make Me Dance" on their site) that lets you choose a dancer, drag a song to a Cingular phone, and then watch the dancer keep beat with the music.

Posted by Doug Fox at 5:55 PM - Permalink | Comments (0)