FCPX & copyright music?

A client has specifically asked for a piece of copyrighted music as part of an internal staff video.

Do i need consent ( I am assuming I do) and how to go about it?

I have always used non-copyright music

You'll need to contact your country's music licensing agency. In the UK, that would be PRS . Depending on the agency, you might find it tricky to talk to them about a small deal or one-off like this – they're not really geared up to sell individual pieces of music to individual users.

One issue: you probably haven't used 'non-copyright' music previously. Copyright is assigned automatically to the originator of the composition when it's created. Now, that creator may license their work freely (using something like Creative Commons licenses), or they might sign their work over to a music library. It's unusual (and in some cases rather difficult) to give up copyright entirely.

Now, there are usually two parts to music licensing. 'Mechanical copying' is the bit you do when you drop the track into your project. 'Publication' occurs when the resulting work is shown. Typically, music licensing fees are payable on both of these.

'Royalty-free' library music is (usually, check the precise terms) pre-licensed for the first part: once you've signed up to the library, you can drop their tracks into your projects without incurring additional mechanical copying fees. However – and this is the bit many people get wrong - whoever publishes the film is still liable for securing publication licenses. These are usually tied to how many plays the film receives.

If you publish library music (yes, even material that's 'royalty free'), you should file music usage returns with your local licensing agency, and pay the usage fee. This can be awkward for things like web publication.

Caveats: I'm not a music licensing specialist; some countries do things differently; not all musicians sign up to be part of the agency framework so you sometimes have to track down who's responsible for licensing; some tracks plain can't be licensed for commercial or business use; in some countries, YouTube has a blanket deal with the licensing agencies for most commercial tracks, making it perversely easier to use commercial music than royalty-free agency music for YouTube publication; I could be plain wrong about any or all of this.

One of the UK's leading intellectual property lawyers once said to me, "The music industry are like rabid beasts. My advice is to avoid them by any means necessary."

Thanks jjsanderson

I am now very nervous about facilitating the clients request (was hoping to build in a price to include the copyright track needed).

:dry:

Yeah, that's the problem with music. The more you know, the scarier it gets. :blink:

You can probably factor in the mechanical copying part of licensing, and leave publication licenses to the client: what they do with the film once they've taken delivery is their business, not yours. You might inform them about the need for usage licenses, but whether they choose to follow your advice or simply ignore the issue is their problem, not yours. You could write that into the contract.

The music model makes more sense when you think about broadcasters: programme makers would buy mechanical copying licenses, then hand over the finished film to the broadcaster along with a music cue sheet. The broadcasters would tally up music use every month or quarter or whatever, and settle up with the collecting agency.

The part that's broken is that the rights agencies want to collect money from the small publishers too, but they haven't made it straightforward for us to comply with their systems. Financially, it's not worth their while to build a system which scales to lots of small publishers/music users. So they've made it our problem to jump through their hoops.

For the most part, they just ignore us - indeed, the chance of a single internal-use film being hit up for non-payment of licensing fees is tiny. The contractual question is who shoulders that risk. Practically speaking, it has to be the publisher/user of the film.

Yeah, the reality is for private internal use, the chances of you getting in trouble are very small, but they still exist. I make all my clients sign a contract when I do work for them that has an indemnity clause in it that basically says "if you force me to use something not cleared and the video gets in trouble, I am not liable"

Thanks guys

Was hoping for an easy answer but think I have opened up a can of worms here.

I tried to establish what I needed on the link you provided but its quite confusing! :huh:

In principle, the easiest thing to do is call PRS directly (assuming you're in the UK), and talk to them. In practice, I've usually found them singularly unhelpful. But still, they should be able to tell you whether they're the right agency to deal with for the particular track you wish to license.

Start there and see where it leads you?

I'd actually suggest it's rather more complicated than even jjsanderson's excellent response indicates. He covers the part of the copyright relating to the composition (words and music) of the recording, which as he says in the UK is administered by PRS For Music.

The actual sound recording also carries a copyright, separate from the PRS (usually called the Publishing) copyright. The copyright on the recording is likely to be owned by a record company (though it may belong directly to the musicians). You need to negotiate the right to synchronise the music to your vid, a so-called sync license. Usually there will be a discussion with the owner about the use/distribution of the video thereafter.

One way round this which many filmmakers use is to commission a similar-but-subtly-different piece of music from a musician/company composed for the purpose and use that. You will pay a negotiable amount for this but it's likely to be much cheaper than using an original recording. Part of my business is engaged in this work, though I do much less of it over the past few years, since the rise of easily accessible library music from the likes of Audio Network.

Hope this helps, probably not.
As you say, it's a can of worms.

This is always a bad idea. Honestly, the client shouldn't be asking you to do this if they know it's a copyrighted piece of music that should be licensed properly. If it ever comes back to haunt you (someone could post to Youtube etc) as digital things have a way of doing, you were the one who synced it to video. Theres tons of usable library stuff out there.

One library I have my music in uses a service called "Tunesat" which monitors hundreds of TV and Cable feeds 24hrs/day. Their computers can match up 5 seconds of music buried in a mix and send a report to the library. It usually comes down to an editor who "forgot to send the paperwork in". Just say no.

tunesat.com/tunesatportal/home

Thanks FFG, I have noticed variants or tracks sounding similar.

Cheers dinerdog (great name)

I will see if the client can be persuaded to use a non-copyrighted piece of music