MUSIC: I admit it. I have always been paranoid about recording “covers” of other people’s songs. Unless you have permission in writing; or have paid a licensing fee to do them; there is always a chance that someone will complain. Or worse. The copyright police will come for you.
That is one good reason why I write my own songs. I wouldn’t want someone stealing my music either. But all those covers of Beatles songs and Adele tunes on YouTube… you can be pretty sure they are illegal. Even “Happy Birthday” is a cover; and you need to get a license. They don’t care that you are giving the song away. And that you are not making money. They couldn’t care less if you are trying to do a benefit project to try to cure Huntington’s Disease, like I am.
But sometimes it is fun to take a familiar song and turn it around and do something different with it. It shows a different side of you as a musician and artist. And I think it shows that you respect the music you grew up with, or learned from. Even the Beatles did some covers. In my case I have had several covers on SoundCloud. I never wanted to really develop them enough to sell them as downloads because of the license issue. For each cover I would have to pay a fee (not really a lot of money) to the Harry Fox Agency. They are the company that controls licenses for songs at least in the United States. But since all of my proceeds go to charity (the Huntington’s Disease clinic) it meant paying money up front for songs that might never be downloaded.
So I was really excited when I read about Loudr.fm, a digital distributor that lets you submit covers. They take care of the licensing. No upfront fees. They get the fees and their own commission when someone buys/downloads the song from their site or the many digital stores they distribute to. I created a new benefit release that I have already blogged about The Songwriter who Went Under Cover. It has been distributed by Loudr to a number of ‘stores’ including iTunes, Spotify, Amazon and Google Play.
But sites like iTunes and Amazon use a snippet of 60 seconds or so. They don’t want anyone freeloading without paying. Where I got into trouble was putting whole songs on SoundCloud so that people could hear the entire track. I wanted to be able to link a “player” with Facebook or with this blog. Someone must have noticed and they took all the songs in that set down. I do have permission for some of them but I think I’ll just move them elsewhere. SoundCloud was a big help in getting me back into music after a long, long time away. But now it is no longer the cosy, friendly place it used to be. I’m actually glad they are finally getting stricter about copyright protection, I just wish it were enforced more evenly.