Considering doing a cover of an old .mod file. It seems unlikely that I will be able to contact the original author for permission. Would it be bad to release it in an album?

Off-Topic
1

There’s an old mod called “Klim’s Theme” that u4ia wrote in remembrance of a friend of his who died. I always remember listening to it and thinking “Wow, I wonder if I will lose a friend one day…”. Well, it’s finally happened.

I’m working on a 12 song album in dedication to her. 11 of the songs are original, but I had the idea to cover Klim’s Theme. I tried to dig around and see if I could find any contact information for u4ia, but I didn’t turn up much.

My cover wouldn’t include any samples or pattern data from the original song, just my own recreation/cover in a different style (most likely slower, with more of a synth lead instead of piano).

I can’t decide whether it would be ethically OK to include this in the album if I end up i.e. putting it on Spotify or something. I may end up just doing an “internal use” only version, and omitting it from any published album.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? It’s not like I’m a big name artist, so honestly if I hadn’t mentioned it, I’m sure I could “get away with it” and nobody would ever notice or care. But, I do want to properly respect the art and intellectual property of other musicians.

Thanks for any input.

:slight_smile:
-io

2

I think u4ia aka F8 aka Jim Young from the UK wouldn’t mind as long as you’re not selling the song and getting money for it. There are many remakes and remixes of old MODs (for free), for example on amigaremix.com. But you could send him a message and ask him yourself.