How should I proceed in order to make an album with jazz standards without breaking any copyright law?

Question

I'm from Brazil and I want to record an album with jazz standards. How should I proceed in order to make it legal? I do not want to break any copyright law.Ricardo

Answer 1

Songs no longer in copyright are termed "public domain". The actual time frame will depend on the country. In Canada, it is 50 years, in the US it is 75 years after the death of the composer(s).

You can get the rights to record music still under copyright by contacting a reproduction rights agency. I do not know the name of the Brazilian one, but you could start with SBACEM (Brazil's version of ASCAP and BMI). It might be ABDR, but I can't read spanish to see if I got it right. You would have to pay a fee for music still under copyright, certain amount per recording.

Answer 2

It depends on how old the songs are. Eventually a copywrite on a song will run out, and it will become public domain. As an example, Christmas songs. Most of the old standby Christmas songs are public domain now, due to their age. Sometimes a copyright will be picked back up and sometimes it won't, especially if the original artist is deceased. My advice would be to research the songs in question to A)discover if there is still a copyright in effect for it and B)find out who you would have to talk to for permission to use that particular song, which will not always be the original artist. I don't know exactly where you would find the copyright information, but you should be able to find something here on Yahoo that will point you in the right direction. Try typing "copyright information" in the search bar, it might come up with something useful.

Answer 3

You will need to get permission from the copyright owners - most likely, this will be the artists record company. It would also be nice to write to the artist themselves and let them know what you are doing.

Answer 4

as quickly as you have been notified, the main suitable factor to do is take down that video. That way you do no longer possibility dropping your channel. YouTube looks for tags with music titles or artist names. in case you do no longer tag your clips with such advice, this is greater complicated for them to be certain which you're employing copyrighted cloth.