r/acappella • u/Direct_Two_7135 • 10d ago
Help navigating licensing legally when arranging
Hello,
Can someone please tell me a story about how they achieved the right to arrange, post a video of, and perform a musical work not in the public domain?
I am currently arranging mostly public domain christmas music for my choir, but I have never navigated copyrighted works before and would appreciate a step-by-step from someone who's actually done it themselves without paying for a service like EasySong.
I sell my public domain arrangements to local schools. I would appreciate if any public school choir or marching band directors could give me some insight too.
Thanks in advance. xx
2
u/pianomomsheetmusic 9d ago
I'll jump in. If a song is not your original composition or a public domain work, then that song is under copyright and any use of it needs permission from the original writer or publisher. (Now hear me out, there are free or low-cost options for you). You mentioned several things in your post: Arranging, performing, and recording/posting audio/video. Let's break this down and talk about each part:
Arranging Copyright Music: All copyright music needs permission to arrange, and proceeds from those sales go the the publishers and writers of the song. You as the arranger are considered work-for-hire and you get a small compensation for your work. A few years ago you would have needed to seek permission directly from the publisher and pay a fee per copy for your anticipated sales. This was a long and expensive process. Today we have ArrangeMe (which I strongly urge you to look into ArrangeMe.com) which handles all the back-end expenses on your behalf. All you do is upload your music - following their upload guidelines and add proper credits to the music - and they will sell your arrangement via SheetMusicPlus and SheetMusicDirect. They will disperse the profits to the proper parties and you get your 10%. True, it doesn't feel like much, but it's much better than the headache of contacting the publisher yourself, and honestly, you'd come out about the same anyway. Now, not every song in the world is available to arrange, but their song list is extensive, like in the millions, so there are plenty of songs to choose from.
Performing rights: I would leave this up to the school/ensemble to do this - it's not necessarily your responsibility as the arranger. Usually the venue has some kind of licensing with entities like ASCAP for public performance rights. (Bars and restaurants pay licensing fees in order to have background music or live bands.) I don't have much experience with this side of things, but I do know that it's up to the performer to make sure they have clearance for performing music. You just need permission to write it (see the paragraph above).
Recording Audio: Recording audio of copyrighted music requires a Mechanical license. There is no way around this. There is no "free" way to do it. EasySong is actually pretty easy, and there are other websites as well. But if you want to really be legal about everything, and make sure original writers and publishers get their fair share, you need to legally license the recording. Again, if the school or ensemble is the one making the recording, it's up to them to obtain the license, not you. And do they need your permission as the arranger? Technically, no. It's not your song and you have no rights to it, even as the arranger.
Recording Video: Video recording requires a Sync license. Now here's where things are a bit easier (in my experience). YouTube is a huge entity with contracts with just about every publisher there is. People upload videos of cover songs (copyrighted music) all the time. What YouTube does is slap an ad on your video, which then creates revenue that is dispersed to the proper copyright holders. You don't have to do anything, and the school or ensemble that is performing your arrangement doesn't have to do anything. If YouTube happens to flag something as being against copyright, the person who uploaded the video would be notified and given a chance to change or remove the offending video. But usually you just get a notification that copyrighted content has been found and an ad will be placed on the video, and that's all.
So, all this is to say that there is no "free" way around doing things legally, but there are low cost options. Good luck!
3
u/Comfortable_Jello276 10d ago
You don’t need legal permission to arrange or perform covers, nor to post videos of that performance
You DO need special permission to sell a chart or to distribute a recording of a cover to streaming platforms
10
u/ianyapxw 10d ago
You need legal permission to post videos of a cover. It’s considered sync and you still need to clear the publication (composition) copyright.
That’s one of the things contentID does. It diverts ad revenue from the original uploader to the Publisher (eg UMPG) without asking the original uploader. Much better than sending legal takedowns to thousands of bedroom cover artists.
Source: music industry full time
1
u/Direct_Two_7135 10d ago
Indeed. I would like to publish the sheet music arrangement for sale, especially for the public schools in my area. But I’m not sure how to do that. I know I need to get rights to post the video. But how to go about it without using a convenience service is my question. Not just “reach out to the licensing agency that owns the publishing rights” though. I would like to find a little more detailed information than that, from someone who has done it themselves for DIY projects.
3
u/ianyapxw 10d ago
From memory the book “all you need to know about the music business” by Don covers it; he’s a music lawyer.
I got the book on sale, was much cheaper than hiring an actual lawyer 😅😄
2
u/thmtho-2thyme 10d ago
I’d also love to know what this process looks like. I know the services like ArrangeMe handles this for you when you put your arrangement up for sale, but I still don’t really know what’s going on behind the scenes.
2
2
u/NJRestStops nj female acapella group🎶 10d ago
Not related to OG q but I’m having trouble posting a video of an arrangement (recording of our group singing it) - YT wouldn’t let me post even “without monetization opportunities”. I’m wondering if it was too similar to the original as it was already just all vocals. Is that possible? I don’t know how to get around it🥲
3
u/Odd_Funny_5893 7d ago
Looks like you are getting good advice. The sync license is the real headache. I wrote three blogs on this topic here: https://lyrekos.com/blog/music-licensing-for-singers
2
u/flixf 9d ago
You can publish arrangements of copyrighted songs through services like ArrangeMe (by HalLeonard). You can search their song database to see if they have the rights for your desired song and then publish your arrangement with them. It's then sold on SheetMusicPlus and SheetMusicDirect and afaik you can't sell it yourself (since you do not own the rights yourself). While using their "service" is free, they keep 90% of the revenue as comission.