Legal Question in Intellectual Property in California
music and copyright
My school wants to make a video yearbook which will be sold for a nominal profit. Although the yearbook is all about pictures, we would want music playing in the background. Are we allowed to use commercial music (back street boys, madona, etc...) or atleast clips of their music? This is just for our school and we would probably only be selling about 100-300 tapes. What is the longest amount of a song (30 seconds, one minute, etc...) which we can pay without paying royalties?
1 Answer from Attorneys
Re: music and copyright
You must get in touch with whoever owns the sound recordings of these songs (usually the record lable) to get what is called a Synchronization license and whoever owns the copyright to the actual song (usally the publisher, check the liner notes) to get another synch license. I assume that you want to use the actual song you have on your CD and not a cover of the song.
There is not a magic amount of a song you can use without persmission.
If you are careful to explain how much of the song and for what purposes you want to use it when you get in touch with the lables and the publishers, you should be able to get permission.
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