Now, if you are self-publishing a book, you may think you can just get away with sticking your favorite song lyrics in your novel and no one will be the wiser. Not respond to your inquiry and leave you wondering why songwriters are so damned difficult.Grant you permission, set the terms, and ask you to pay whatever fee they’d like.Flat-out deny you the right to quote the lyrics.The writers and publishers of the lyrics you want to quote are entitled, by law, to: If you want to print the lyrics of a popular song in your book to set a mood, have a character sing along with the radio, or use as a lead-in to your chapters, you need permission from the copyright owner. Anything already published is protected by copyright, and that means you need to seek permission to republish.
Technically, as a matter of fact, the artist needs to get permission from him/herself to print the lyrics on his/her album. This is why, as you may have noticed, the lyrics to cover songs are very often not included in an album’s liner notes, even though all the artist’s original song lyrics are. For that, I need permission from the copyright owner, and there’s no guarantee I’ll get it, and certainly no guarantee the process of soliciting approval will be quick. Now that’s all well and good, but it does NOT give me permission to reprint the song’s lyrics in my liner notes. If I only sell 25 copies of the initial pressing, I still need to pay for the right to include the recording on the other 975 copies sitting in my mom’s basement. When my album does blow up, and and I need to reorder 100,000 copies, that’ll put $9,100 in Pharell’s pocket (or at least in the publishing company’s coffers). So that’s $91 paid to the copyright owner – typically through the company that is publishing the music. Note that’s every copy “made,” not “sold.” So if my band covers “Happy,” by Pharrell Williams, and I’m making 1,000 CDs (initially, of course, ’cause we’re gonna blow up and sell 100,000), I’ve got to pay 9.1¢ per CD copy made that includes the song.
#Flatout 2 breathing song license#
A music artist does not need permission to record and release a previously recorded song, but he/she does need to license the song and pay royalties for every copy made.
The current artist is “covering” the other artist’s song. When a music artist records a song previously released by another artist, that’s called a cover. Authors have been quoting song lyrics in their books for eons, but if you plan to quote lyrics written after 1925, be prepared to do some research - and get out your checkbook - long before releasing your book.
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