Musicians: Who owns the rights to your promotional mp3?

Alessi’s Ark // Shovelling by Stayloose …. buy Alessi’s Ark’s Soul Proprietor here!

I’m writing a post to people who play, perform, and hopefully sell music, for once. Who owns the rights to your promotional MP3s? Well this seems to be an easy enough question, doesn’t it? Seems to be, ha…. We assume you want people to hear a sample and then go buy the album or EP. But who really owns copyright over that sample? Bloggers have, of course, been forced to come up with the answer to this copyright question. I’ve written about this before, as we’re given music by artists, labels, PR folk, men in dark alleys wearing trench coats… ok, maybe only that one time. But honestly, it’s amazing that of all these people, no one really does understand what it takes to get permission for us to give you darling readers an MP3. Even when the label says yes, the artist says yes (and they have written, performed, and recorded the song themselves) and the distributor says yes, it’s still not up to them sometimes. Musicians, have you joined a musicians’ rights organization or union? What rights have you signed over?

I learned this from a fellow blogger in Ireland, Niall of Nialler9 a place you should be checking out regularly for great music! The IMRO (Irish Music Rights Organization, an association that protects artists rights) wrote Niall an email demanding he pay a license fee in order to offer music in Ireland. He’s looked into the legality of such a request and has met with representatives of the organization, taking a lawyer with him. He writes about it here, on his blog. It’s all up in the air. But we all feel that it’s a matter of time before such things come to pass in other countries, including here (ASCAP is our equivalent organization)

But honestly, how ludicrous is it to imagine a blogger, who is promoting music sales, to be required to pay a license fee in every country in which their blog is “broadcast?” It’s the WORLD wide web, darlings. Niall’s meeting (along with some other bloggers) resulted in an agreement to consider the following (quoted directly from Niall’s post):

* to see if there is a possibility to introduce a non-commercial license which would cover non-commercial blogs and sites (Darragh, Asleep On A Compost Heap and Shane, The Torture Garden for example).
* to see what kind of solutions can be reached in terms of online licensing in future.
* to consult concerned IMRO members on all of the issues in which this license affects them, as currently, IMRO members assign their copyrights to the organisation to collect royalties but do not have any kind of opt-out or waiver for members with regards to promotional material.

I’ll keep you posted. As you know, Love Shack, Baby is, and will continue to be ad-free. I make nothing from this, I receive only occasional CD’s and entrance to live shows in return for writing this blog. I pay a few hundred dollars a year for hosting fees and consider myself very fortunate to be able to do so. This is my hobby and I love it. Thank you for being my reason to do so, xoxo