Hi Forum,I recently did an unofficial remix using Renoise of Gotye ft Kimbra-somebody that I used to know and uploaded it to soundcloud.It stayed up there for 3 months with good feedback rolling in on a daily basis.I then received an email which constituted a warning from soundcloud regarding copyright infringement and my track was subsequently deleted.As a matter of fact I counted at least 90 different remixes of the same track that is still on soundcloud.My question is,is it copyright infringement to remix a track for NON-COMMERCIAL gain.I have never released any of my music or remixes, and I don’t know much about the legal issues.I am quite pissed off with the whole incident.What are your thoughts,advice or criticisms.
Thanx for the insight.I can’t help wondering why I was the only remixer targeted.Its a pity.I suppose its best I move on from the experience.I quite enjoyed the remix though.
You can always try to contact the original author and request a permission to distribute on a non-commercial base, but that highly depend on the agency willing to do that.
They rather have you cashing in and pay your share than providing for free, specially if your mix gets popular and i think the latter was what made a difference in your remix being removed (so you could consider your removal as a compliment). It does not count how much comments a product gets, but how many plays and downloads within a certain period.
right to copy has nothing to do with right to make money. well, it does, cause nobody really cares until the money part comes around. maybe yours was just too good? take it as a compliment then sees and desist… or whatever they call it
Yeah, I was going to say to take it as a compliment that your on the right track, You got some kind of reaction from somewhere… Just learn from it and test waters till you find an opening =) Someone, obviously of some status to that track, felt you were a threat in some way… Just a thought anyway…
I’ve been thinking about making a cover song. That means I would play all the instruments myself, not remixing the original material. But the song is originally composed and published by someone else.
Would that be a copyright infringement too? If so, does anybody if it is hard/expensive to get a some kind of license for a cover song?
Well, that article was 6 years ago and that happened in Japan.
As long as you contribute fees from the income you gain from the performance, there should be no problem.
The problem with copyrights for covers is that there are different laws in each country. In USA, a song’s author has what is called right of first release, which means the writer decides who gets to make the first record of something, but after the writer no longer has a say and any number of cover records can be made if the cover artist pays statutory royalties. There are services which aid in the process of paying, this is not legal advice, etc.
Hmm, does this all mean that I am allowed to make a cover song of something that has already been released as a cover safely. For example Paranoid is ok, but Burn It Down by Linkin Park is not ok? And I may publish this kind of cover song in SoundCloud for anyone to listen? And supposingly I am never going to make any money with that song, no licences or payments needed?
Largest of the issues is that copyright laws vary in different countries, and we are somehow presumed to respect the laws of all countries when we share recordings on the internet. Common sense shows this is not true but this thread isn’t intended to debate…
The second issue is that I am only familiar with US copyright law, the law actually says how much a cover artist owes a song’s author; that amount has changed over the years- and it is okay to agree to a different royalty amount with the songwriter as long as you put it in writing.
That means that you would still owe the author money. The royalty is based on copies distributed, not how much money you make.
Third is that the copyright on the song is not the same as the copyright on a sampled recording. If you are the type who shares original songs, and you use one of the creative commons licenses to allow sharing, that license is only for the recording and the song and lyric material remain yours unless you say otherwise and name a license for the song too.
