Re: legal questions about audio content
Re: legal questions about audio content
- Subject: Re: legal questions about audio content
- From: Morgan Packard <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2012 16:50:31 -0400
Selling loops for other musicians to use is
a well established business. I think your legal situation may be very similar to that of someone who makes a loop pack and sells, regardless of the fact that you're packaging it up in your own software.
-Morgan
On Fri, Jun 8, 2012 at 4:26 PM, Brian Willoughby
<email@hidden> wrote:
David,
There are at least a few books out there concerning the legal questions of music licensing. I would hope that a book on music licensing would cover samples, too, but I have not read these books myself. My musician friends have learned a lot by reading such books, but still rely on professionals to interpret the finer legal details.
One thing I've learned by reading over their shoulders is that any single piece of music can be licensed several times for distinct uses. There might be licensing for use of the music in a movie, but that can be separate from licensing the same song for use on the soundtrack of that movie. Then you have use of the song in an advertisement, whether that be the trailer for the movie itself, or perhaps just an ad for another product. Then you have licensing of that same song for a video game, whether it is related to a movie or an independent video game. Then there is specific licensing for ring tones and other nascent media formats. Then you have the sheet music, fees for performing the song, and that's all separate from licensing of the specific recording of the song.
In other words, your license probably does not include the right to sell the samples in a sampled instrument. My thought, and I am not a lawyer, is that you'd need to commission a musician or other sample artist to create samples that you can sell as part of your product, and you'll probably also want a lawyer to write up a contract that puts the burden on the sample creation artist to guarantee that they have not used copyrighted samples during their task of creating samples for you.
If you were selling a video game on iOS, and you wrote some background music that employed the samples in these libraries, then I think you might have an argument that such usage of the samples constitutes "normal" song writing. But that is not the case, here.
As for your sampled instrument software, you're almost re-selling the samples, even though they've been massaged as you describe. You've done the right thing by attempting to obtain permission, but my advice is that if you are not getting prompt cooperation, then you really should commission new samples for your product.
There are musicians and video game soundtrack people out there who do this sort of thing every day. You might still need legal contracts to protect yourself from third- or fourth-party law suits, but there are lawyers for that, too.
Good luck, and contact me directly if you want some leads on potential artists who might be able to create samples for your product.
Brian Willoughby
Sound Consulting
On Jun 8, 2012, at 09:22, David Keenan wrote:
This is not technically a Core Audio question, although it's related to the software I'm building for Ios using Core Audio.
My software uses loops that I have built myself using sampled instruments and synthesisers from various companies.
At no point do I use any sounds as they are represented upon purchase, they are always accompanied by other sounds, beats/chords etc, and are pre-rendered and mixed before they go into the software.
I'm getting pretty close to a release now, but have halted slightly as I got a little concerned about the rights I have to use these sounds.
Obviously I have purchased a licence allowing me to use them for music composition, but details of usage in music/creation/entertainment software seem to be somewhat of a grey area
in the legal documents found on some of the companies's websites.
Here is an example of the Terms Of Use from one of the companies: This PRODUCT may not, in whole or in part, be copied, photocopied, translated, or reduced to any electronic medium or machine readable form, without prior consent in writing, from the AUTHOR(S) and according to all applicable laws.
Something similar to this is stated in all the companies's legal documents.
I would say that my loops, as they do not play any one single sound from any library are legal for me to use.
They can be considered musical compositions that are looped within the software.
But the companies might not see it this way at all, this is what I'm wondering.
I have contacted support at some of these companies, and any concrete answers have yet to be produced, they seem to be jammed on not-really-sure mode.
Have any of you tackled these questions yourself? How did you sort it out?
Did you need special permission for usage of samples?
Any tips are very appreciated.
And an additional question is this:
For anyone who have made a sampled instrument, where have you gotten/purchased samples and their respective licences?
thank you
d
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Morgan Packard
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