General Music Chat

I was getting messages that a friend of mine posted stuff in "Facebook."
It's a musician's place. To read the posts, I had to sign up.
So, ok, I choose a musician's account instead of individual. Then statred reading about 35 - 50 pages of tiny print . . . .
Read the fine print people!
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There is a section of fime print that says, basically, that any song I upload becomes THEIR property!
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What the . . .?
The fine print basically says they can copy, play, distribute, or do anything they damn well please with my music!
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I wrote them, and got this answer:
"For legal reasons, we must keep (that) clause in our Terms of Use to protect ourselves from possible litigation:"
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Ok, folks are you ready for this? Here's the actual fine print:
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“By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an

irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.
You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire,
however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.”.
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They tell me that, for legal reason, I need to agree to that?
I will not post my work there, that's for sure.
Maybe it's time for me to re-read the BandMix fine print, too . . .

There is a section of fime print that says, basically, that any song I upload becomes THEIR property!

No, not their property. Still YOUR property. You grant a license for use of the material, which conceivably could include sales I suppose. But that is unlikely. Even if they did sell the material on a compilation CD for example, they would have to pay you royalties. You still retain the Copyright. It's just CYA (cover your ass) legal language to protect them.

Very standard stuff, which ALL music sites will have. MySpace, Bandmix, will all have similar language.

There's nothing you can do to prevent anyone from using your material once it has been shared publicly. What you can always do, is sue for royalties if your music was used without permission.

The three main reasons that record companies aquire permission to use an artist's material, is 1) Negotiate a better pay-out (cheaper) than is designated by congress (who set the standard royalty fee per unit sold) and 2) Business courtesy and 3) Avoiding legal fees for being sued for the royalties.

Examples of people who might have to get sued for royalties include...

1) Hip Hop artists who use samples of another artist's work, but try to be sneaky and not pay them for it. Example is Vanilla Ice who sampled the key lick from "Under Pressure" for his "Ice Ice Baby" song. These artists sometimes don't like to pay those royalties because they are usually using a very small part of the song, or sometimes they are just poor wannabes that recorded something on a tight budget and got lucky when it hit big.

2) Hustlers who might put together a compilation Elvis album, sell them through direct marketing, and not pay the Elvis estate the royalties, hoping they don't catch on.

In any event, you really have nothing to worry about. What you may want to do, is put only a short sample of each song, rather than the entire song, which would effectively prevent them from using your entire song without permission. Cause they would have to have you send it to them to do so.

keep up the good work Craig, I enjoy reading your posts. Later...your friendly neighborhood bluesman fisherman bob

keep up the good work Craig, I enjoy reading your posts.

Thanks Bob,

The feeling is mutual brother!

I hear ya.
I said the same thing about another site once..
The wording sure leaves you with the impression that they can certainly use your work for their profit doesn't it?

Almost seems crystal clear to me..