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cd ediquette

bass dan

bass dan

Feb 18, 2007
845
72
st. simons isl. GA
#1
my band just recently recorded a live style cd. we really want to offer this cd at our gigs. we dont have but 2 original songs recorded and a mix of traditional songs and covers.

we dont feel like we could sell this cd since most the songs were not written by us. the cost of just burning them and giving them away is a possability, but it would be nice to at least recover the cost of the blank cd's and and packaging materials.

my thought was to put the cd out there for free and have a sign asking for donations for the cd. sure some folks would take some for free, but i believe the majority would leave somthing, especially if they were planning on tipping anyway.

many folks have asked for a cd and said they would gladly pay for one. this is what led us to recording one. now the question is what to do with it. the recording quality is pretty good. we did it live at a club in savannah georgia that was offering a monday night recording session at there club for $1 a minute. pretty cool deal, we ended up with about a hour of recorded music that the engineer cut up into tracks for us for $60. you can hear some of it on our my space page, which i have a link to in my signature.

just curious what the ediquette was for getting our music out there, and possibly raising some cash to cover the costs of putting it out there.
 
#4
This is a complicated subject, however you can find tons of info on the web:

Compulsory Mechanical Royalties

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I remember one time, I was playing in a little three piece band at a restaurant. We were basically playing bluegrass/folk tunes some even in public domain. We did a lot of stuff like your band does (by the way, I like your songs) but with vocals.
Well, another restaurant became disturbed because we were taking business away from them. They called ASCAP, which in turned contacted the restaurant where we were playing and informed them that they would have to pay for a Performance Royalty license in order to have us play. They couldn't afford that, which ended our gig!

If I remember correctly, one time I investigated paying for a CD and I looked it up at the Harry Fox Agency web site. I think you can pull the songs, and pay royalties based on how many CD's you are going to press.

Hope this helps.
 
#6
bass dan said:
some good info there. thanks. the harry fox agency is somthing i may have to look in to if we feel we actually want to sell our cd. is putting the cd out there for free and accepting donations for them out of bounds?
Click to expand...

You need to pay for a mechanical license for any song for which you do not own the copyright, regardless of whether you sell your CD or give it away.
 
#8
dmrogers said:
I remember one time, I was playing in a little three piece band at a restaurant. We were basically playing bluegrass/folk tunes some even in public domain. ...They called ASCAP, which in turned contacted the restaurant where we were playing and informed them that they would have to pay for a Performance Royalty license in order to have us play. They couldn't afford that, which ended our gig!
Click to expand...
It's not just for live music, if they are playing home made cassettes on a boom box behind the counter, they still need an ASCAP/BMI license. So what's that joint using now? If they've got MUZAK or some other provider, they cover the licensing. But if what they did was just turn on the radio, they still need the license. If they still want to have live music all they have to do is hire a group that plays music written by musicians in the group; since THEY hold rights, they don't have to pay for them.

But I gotta wonder, performance license isn't more than a few hundred bucks ($200- 700) a year, were you guys getting paid to play there? If you ball park it in the middle, they couldn't come up with $37.50 a month?



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#9
Ed Fuqua said:
It's not just for live music, if they are playing home made cassettes on a boom box behind the counter, they still need an ASCAP/BMI license. So what's that joint using now? If they've got MUZAK or some other provider, they cover the licensing. But if what they did was just turn on the radio, they still need the license. If they still want to have live music all they have to do is hire a group that plays music written by musicians in the group; since THEY hold rights, they don't have to pay for them.

But I gotta wonder, performance license isn't more than a few hundred bucks ($200- 700) a year, were you guys getting paid to play there? If you ball park it in the middle, they couldn't come up with $37.50 a month?



Invalid Link Removed
Click to expand...


I understand the legality of playing anything in a public establishment. We had looked into all of that.

What you are looking at here is a small restaurant in a small town (Think Mayberry). They were just getting started, at first, we volunteered to play for free to hone the new group and help get business going. And it was working too! Their business was growing and they had started paying us, plus feeding us and our dates. That gig was getting us other, paid gigs. We weren't doing it for money, we just wanted to play in a nice environment, which it was.

I think they were told (this was several years ago and I am old) they had to pay around $500 yearly, but seems they were getting harassed, something about back payment from the previous year. I think they were asked to cough up $1000 right then.

Anyway, they couldn't afford an upfront payment like that, so we said "no problems, no hard feelings" and wished them well. After about another year, they went out of business, but that was caused by family squabbles, not the business generating revenue.

You know, I tried to get the group to work together to come up with original tunes, but they thought it was too much trouble. We eventually split. They are playing now, and after several years off, after managing Link Removed I'm looking at getting back into it. Such is the life of a musician. :cool:
 

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