Legal Question in Intellectual Property in California

Re: Agreement between Musician and Online Vendor

I have to disagree with Mr. Whipple. Ascap/BMI collect royalties for public performances, but what you're doing is essentially acting as a so-called "music library", which will grant what's called a "synchronization license". For this you need authorization for both the Master Recordings and the underlying musical compositions.

You're not reinventing the wheel here, so I advise checking out some other online music libraries to see how they do things!

Finally, one word about free or cheap legal forms: You get what you pay for. If you're serious about your business, put some money where your mouth is...Customized documents creates specifically for your purposes is well worth the investment. It's probably not that expensive, and it will provide some significant protections.

Re: Agreement between Musician and Online Vendor

Hmmmmmmmm.... have you thought of contacting ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and publishers)? They are in the performance licensing business and create license forms. I do think they may be creating for their members' use, and maybe ASCAP is a competitor in doing what you're thinking of doing. Anyway, I think you would benefit from perusing their Web site.

I suggest ASCAP because they are probably the biggest user of forms that fall into your area, and if there is anything "for sale" they are a likely source.

Otherwise, it's a pretty uncommon business, at least as you intend to operate, so you may be stuck with sitting down with a lawyer you've retained, explaining your business concept in detail, and then building a workable document from the ground up; this may entail two or three revisions of a first draft and some research on the lawyer's part to come up with a document that can be used over and over in your proposed business with only minor filling-in of blanks to adapt from one client to the next. (Or, to avoid the unprofessional look of filled-in blanks, it would be better to load the contract into a word processor with the blanks to be filled in seamlessly by the software on each use.

In an intellectual-property business, high-quality license, etc. documents are an important part of your business capital, just as lathes are to a machine shop, and you will get schlock results from schlocky docs.