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 on August 13, 2007 7:22 AM
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I would say that most of us do not secure the rights to music until after we have gotten burned but a great solution is to hire/collaborate with a composer. This way you are getting original music and you don't have to deal with ASCAP or Harry Fox. Another thing I have done is to learn to use GarageBand for loops or musique_concrete using Adobe Premiere Pro to edit the music. This is another skill one has to learn in addition to crafting a dance but I think it is worth it in order to own all of one's dance content. Using creative commons work is excellent, there are many composers on the Internet who would be willing to work with dance artists. I collaborate weekly with David Morneau who posts a new 60 second musical composition daily.