Music copyright for films and videos is complicated. In the past if you edited a film or video, each country had slightly differing ways of doing things. In the UK you dealt with the MCPS (mechanical copyright protection society). You paid them for a licence for various territories, they in turn paid the composer, publisher, record company which in turn would pay thr musicians based on the number of sessions the musician had played on. Most mood music libraries limited their recording to one session so as to avoid huge repeat (session fees).
Whilst the MCPS handled all music licencing, there was a set fee for each region. However, if you wanted to use a piece of music by say "Pink Floyd or The Who you would need to contact the copyright owner directly. Many would say just pay the standard MCPS fees, others would negotiate an extra charge.
PRS is not something you deal with, that is for exhibition and most cinemas, village halls, and other places of entertainment pay an annual licence fee to the PRS (Performing rights society) to cover all music played there. Most TV stations pay an annual MCPS licence to cover all music used on their channels. Although the production company still has to provide a list of all music used, along with composer, publisher etc and length of the piece used.
I have recently been editing some videos for the You Tube channel of a charity and have been trying to clear some music. I have been through all the usual channels. I am told by the large music publishing companies like Time Warner, that like say the BBC that You Tube now have an annual licence to cover music played. I assume though, from the comments on here that maybe the agreement is not as all inclusive as it needs to be, and that certain pieces of music can not be played under it without further permissions. I would assume that this is why certain music is rejected.
What surprised me is the detection of orchestra performances of ancient composers. The well known “tunes” can be detected by a human, obviously (although a human is not going to identify the orchestra and when recorded, unless trained) but here the orchestra is specified too:
so they are looking for a close match. And clearly Sony purchased the rights to that particular performance and have supplied YT (or some database) with a reference file.
I guess this is a reasonable compromise, operated by YT.
Usually when you download music either from CD or online, it will be identified somewhere in the file. All their algorithm has to do is match thar information with their database to find out whether or not it is included in their licence.
The paying of the musicians. composer etc will be either for the producer or an agency dealing in this. It often is all part of a block payment shared out pro rata with all stakeholders.
It is much harder with a stakeholder who or which has not signed on to the system.
it will be identified somewhere in the file
That is very true but I have just done a check and the tracks I used didn’t have anything in the mp3 header. No idea of their origin…
In the old days, a lot of people transferred CDs to MP3 via an analog cable and then no composer etc data would be transferred. Same of course for LP to MP3.
I recall being in Paris on a summer evening many years ago and some street band was playing amazingly good versions of The Eagles. I wonder, if you recorded one of these and put it on YT today, whether YT would throw it out. The lyrics must be copyright, at least.
You would need permission from the musicians to record them and permission from the music publisher for them to play the music and for you to record them. It would be a standard recording contract. You would then be able to lodge the recording with the various agencies if you want to be paid when it is used and you can use it as you wish within any limitations agreed between all parties. As you would be the copyright holder of that recording you would be able to use the music on You Tube, but they may need to see the contracts, but unless You Tube take on the responsibilty under their licence for paying the musicians, composer, publisher etc, that would be down to you for each viewing. Did I say it was complicated ?
Perhaps this is why Youtube stopped bothering with videos which contain copyright music and simply sends any moneytisation to the copyright holders.
What Vimeo do I have no idea but they may actually be doing the same thing, because while they never complain about any music I have used, I give them $50/year, and they can skim off a bit of that and send that to the copyright holders, quietly. So maybe Vimeo users who have the free subscription do get some other process.
It is a reasonable compromise given the vast scale on which people are using all kinds of music, partial and complete, on videos, and more than likely the copyright holders are pretty happy with it. And is saves digging around for copyright-free music of which the vast majority will be unusable for anything.
The “Paris street band” example is clearly an impossible situation to deal with.
Peter wrote:
What surprised me is the detection of orchestra performances of ancient composers
The tune might be long out of copyright, but the performance and recording might not be.
However, with classical music, the algorithm is very bad at mis-identifying the recording – e.g. misidentifying a recording made by people who specifically put that recording in the public domain as another recording subject to copyright. You can of course challenge that, and say “this is the PD recording made by XYZ, not the recording your algorithm alleges”.
The only music I want in flying videos is the music created by the engine.
The well known “tunes” can be detected by a human, obviously (although a human is not going to identify the orchestra and when recorded, unless trained) but here the orchestra is specified too so they are looking for a close match. And clearly Sony purchased the rights to that particular performance and have supplied YT (or some database) with a reference file.
Most media houses supply Google with private uploads of their copyrighted material for the digital id database in order to be then able to claim any copy that pops out.
The new digital fingerprinting id engine is quite good – it will detect even mirrored / altered videos or frame rate modifications.
