Hi all,
I have a question and thought this would be the place to go to find an understandable answer. My father in law is an old music fan (really really obscure early rock and roll) and came up with the idea of trying to put out a CD of his favorite tracks from back then. My question(s) is, how would he go about getting rights to put these songs onto a recording? I know he'd have to get master use rights to be able to put the original recording onto a new CD, but with the sge of these songs, I'm pretty sure that most of the writers are dead by now and even more of the labels that they were originally recorded on no longer exist.
Thanks in advance for any and all assistance!
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LittleDog, Unless I'm reading wrong, HFA doesn't really help
LittleDog,
Unless I'm reading wrong, HFA doesn't really help in my situation. HFA is for liscensing the rights to cover a song, not to obtain a liscense to use the original recording. The other respondant said what I've found from doing research; that is, I'll have to contact each song's owner to negotiate a master use right so that I could use the song.
What I wanted to know originally, even if I wasn't very clear about it, was isn't there an easy way to do this? Like with HFA, the publishers have a clearing house to obtain rights. It seems to me that nothing of that type exists for help with getting rights to a specific recording.
D
I know of no shortcut to simplify contacting the owners of the m
I know of no shortcut to simplify contacting the owners of the master recordings. Many labels go out of business. Their only real assets are their master recordings, which are usually sold when a company goes under. Over the long haul, masters tend to gravitate towards the majors - they have the deep pockets to buy rights, and to exploit those rights.
You can check amazon.com to see if tracks are available, then contact the owners that way. if the track is on a compilation, contact them to see who they got the rights from. It boils down to being a "music detective" and also getting used to making 10 calls for every one that is returned.......
You still need to track down the owners of both the master recor
You still need to track down the owners of both the master recordings as well as the publishers, and negotiate a deal with them. With the current trend towards extending the length of copyright, chances are VERY slim that any of the compositions will have entered Public Domain.
If you don't do this, and put out the CD anyhow, you will probably have to deal with hostile lawyers..... Happy New Year!