Musical America Blogs

By Brian Taylor Goldstein, Esq. Dear Law and Disorder: A successful duo I represent has recorded a CD which is being released by a record company. Although the artist made attempts to obtain a contract, because of time restraints, according to the record company, it was only possible to give a contract AFTER the recording [...]

By Brian Taylor Goldstein, Esq. Dear Law and Disorder: A few weeks ago you wrote a great article about how to obtain a mechanical license when someone wants to record music. But what about using a recording that already exists? We would like to promote an upcoming concert at our venue by putting some recordings [...]

By Brian Taylor Goldstein, Esq. Dear Law and Disorder: Does all music (if not in public domain) require a mechanical license to be recorded? I don’t quite understand when it is needed and when a person could pay a statutory fee and move forward without permission. Yes, anytime you want to make an audio recording [...]

By Brian Taylor Goldstein, Esq. Dear Law and Disorder, I am a music professor at a medium-sized state college. We have two questions with regard to live streaming some of our concerts and recitals. We, of course, have paid the ASCAP and BMI licenses/fees to cover the rights for live performances. I believe the licensing [...]

By Brian Taylor Goldstein, Esq. Dear Law and Disorder: May we loan music that we own for orchestral performances by other non-profit organizations (schools, community orchestras, etc? Would the other group still need to obtain performing/recording permissions? Could we be liable if they don’t? It depends how define “own.” If by “own”, you mean that [...]

By Brian Taylor Goldstein, Esq. I own the video footage of a performance by a dance company. Recently, I learned that another choreographer purchased a license from the dance company to recreate and perform the same work. However, they used a copy of my video to help in recreating the choreography. In other words, they [...]

By Brian Taylor Goldstein So glad I found your page on the internet, so far it’s been the most helpful out of all my Google searches! I have just a couple of questions. We are from Australia and I have a 14 year old son who has signed a recording contract in the US. Currently we are traveling [...]

By Brian Taylor Goldstein Can you answer this question for us?  My soon to be son-in-law is a musician. He has written and recorded many songs, and is producing his first CD.  One of the songs on the CD, he had a female friend sing with him.  If he plans to put this song on [...]

By Brian Taylor Goldstein HELLO – How can an organization that presents music programs, and puts some of them on the Internet, find a good general release form for artists/speakers to sign? The tricky part about forms is not finding them, but choosing which one is right. There are lots of sources for good general [...]

By Robyn Guilliams Dear Law and Disorder, What are the copyright issues in posting a performance of a piece of music on YouTube for global streaming?  And, since people can easily download YouTube content, what are the implications for the person who’s posted it, or the downloaders for that matter? Before answering your question, I [...]