The official US government site, information,
copyright registration forms, information on
searching copyright records.
Database of performed works and search engine for copyrighted music and lots of links to copyrighted poetry
or prose to music.
Database of works restored to copyright protection.
Information on public domain music, and legal issues
affecting copyright free music. This website sells PD
music books, "traditional folk music" and other music
copyrighted in America prior to 1922, but more importantly,
they list numerous links to universities, museums,
foundations and libraries that have extensive collections.
Many have indexed PD music that can be downloaded
on-line for use.
The SESAC repertory database contains works in the
SESAC repertory for which SESAC, Inc. has compiled
information from various sources. The database lists
songs or compositions, titles, composers, authors and
publisher information on musical compositions, including
copyrighted arrangements of public domain works. The
information is updated regularly and may change on a
daily basis.
In order to comply with the U.S. copyright law, any
establishment that plays copyrighted music is legally
required to secure permission to use copyrighted music,
whether in a live performance or by mechanical means.
A music user can do this by securing licenses from the
three performing rights organizations recognized by the
U.S. Copyright Act of 1976: one of which is SESAC. Getting
a SESAC license ensures the music user of complying
with the copyright law and also of having access to SESAC's
diversified repertory, worry-free. Many SESAC licenses can
be obtained from the licensing section of this website.
Public domain. Information on the Sonny Bono Memorial
Copyright Extension Act extending copyrights by an extra
20 years (longer than the life of a patent), preventing more
music from becoming public domain. Professor Dennis
Karjala was a leader in the law professors' opposition to
extension.
You have to obtain different kinds of copyright permissions, depending on whether you want to make a recording ("mechanical license"), or distribute a printed arrangement of a copyrighted work. The process is much simpler and more straight forward for recording, since there is a "statutory rate" in effect for any/all copyrighted tunes you may wish to record (as of January 1, 2006, that rate is .091 cents per song per copy of the recording you want to make). So, if you make 500 copies of a CD that has 2 copyrighted tunes on it, it would wind up costing you $45.50 for each song, or $91 total for 500 copies of the CD.
As Quintin Stevens pointed out, the Harry Fox Agency has simplified the process quite a bit, as they represent about 90% of the major music publishers in the United States as far as issuing "mechanical licenses" for making/distributing recordings. They now have an on-line searchable database on their website (SongFile), where you can search by song title and/or writer/composer, and you can find all versions/arrangements of the copyrighted songs, and then apply on-line for a mechanical license. They require you to pay for the license "up front" (even thought the Copyright law only states that you must pay the royalties for copyrighted tunes once each quarter, and then it is only based on the number of copies you actually sold that quarter, not how many you had made originally). But it is generally much easier to simply pay the entire fee for the total number of CDs you want to make up front - less bookkeeping required! To do it through Harry Fox, you must pay for a minimum of 500 copies, and they also charge a service fee (I belive it may be $5 or $10 per song) to issue the license. Most commercial duplicating companies now require proof that a mechanical license has been obtained for any/all copyrighted songs on a CD project before they will agree to manufacture the copies for you.
The other way to do it is to contact the copyright holders directly yourself. In the folk music world, this usually works fairly well. You can find standard "compulsory mechanical license" forms on-line, and you fill them in and mail them to the writer/composer. I've just finished a new recording that includes tunes by Bill Staines, Pops Bayless, and John Prine, and it was pretty simple to obtain the necessary permissions from them directly this way (none of them were in the Harry Fox data base anyway).
On the other hand, publishing an arrangement (either in a book, or as some of us now do it by making individual tunes available) is an entirely different matter, and not quite as easy. Since the publishing industry is much older than the recording industry, there are no such statutory rates that cover publishing fees. Essentially, publishers (i.e. the companies that own the publishing rights to copyrighted music) can charge whatever they want for a publishing license ... or even refuse to grant such a license at all, at any price. You have to find out who the publisher is (oftentimes the rights have been sold and re-sold many times to different publishers over the years). Also, it is a pretty common practice for tunes to be owned by multiple publishers simultaneously, each one getting a certain percentage of the publishing royalties. In those cases, you must contact each individual publisher separately, and negotiate separate license agreements with each. You can use the SongFile database at Harry Fox to come up with the names of the publisher(s) for most tunes (although many composers/writers in the folk music world are not represented by Harry Fox, and you have to track them down by other means).
It can be a daunting task. I had been working on obtaining copyright permission for "Vincent" since 1991, when I first wrote my "Dulcified" tab book to go with the "Dulcified" recordings. At first, I couldn't get any response from the publisher (Benny Bird music) - they simply weren't interested in dealing with such a small number of books as would be involved in publishing a book of tablature for mountain dulcimer. A few years later, the publishing rights were sold to another company called "Songs of Universal", and I contacted them. They at least responded, but the price they quoted me was based on a minimum quantity of 5,000 copies, which was far too expensive for the relatively small "niche market" of the dulcimer world. Recently, another publisher took over representation for Songs of Universal, and I finally was able to negotiate more reasonable terms with them to make the arrangement of "Vincent" available.
I'm still working on negotiating similar publishing permissions for a number of other tunes I've played/recorded over the years. Some publishers refuse to sell publishing rights to any songs in their catalog to individuals at any price.
"Misty" is one of those tunes that is owned to different extents by 4 different publishing companies. After nearly 15 years, I now have deals in place with 3 out of the 4 ... still working on the last one!
I usually go through the process of contacting them about once every 6 months. It is kind of an "arbitrary process", and whoever happens to be in the office the day your letter or e-mail arrives, or whoever answers the phone when you call them, may give you a different answer than the person who handled it the last time you contacted them. So you may need to be persistent, but hopefully it will work out eventually. (It finally paid off for me for "Vincent"!
The other way handle it is to try and get one of the larger music publishing companies interested in publishing your book - someone like Mel Bay, Hal Leonard, etc. They generally have much more success in dealing with getting permissions from other publishers than we can do as individuals. Of course, that service comes at a price as well, and you have to decide whether it is worth it to you as an artist to let them do that for you or not.
Folks like Quintin Stevens, who are talented writers/composers as well as players, have the best of all worlds - they can write and publish their own music without needing to deal with all these hassles! Or, you can stick with strictly traditional/public domain music ... if you can "wait them out", all the copyrighted righted music out there will fall into public domain eventually ... currently 75 years after the death of the composer ... although now I believe the copyright can be renewed one more time after that ....
This is pretty much the reason why there aren't a lot of dulcimer tablature books out there with more "contemporary" music in them. But it can be done, as many folks in the dulcimer world have proven. Just takes a bit of work, some negotiating skills, and a lot of persistance!
Good luck with your project, and if there is anything I can do to help in any way, just let me know. The more times folks in the dulcimer world are successful with obtaining publishing licenses, the easier it will become for the next person ... I hope!
Cheers,
--Tull
Tull's Website
E-Mail Tull
