Musical America Blogs

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 agencies base [...]

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. Dear Law and Disorder: I have a small venue. All 3 licensing companies are claiming I need to pay them for my karaoke and music that occurs weekly, but the bands that I have sign contracts making sure they only play their original music, nothing copyrighted. These companies have been [...]

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 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 Dear Law & Disorder: I recently came across the website of an artist management agency in Europe where they had posted the following: “The press review is temporarily not available. German newspapers Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Süddeutsche Zeitung recently started to pursue institutions and artists using texts (press reviews, interviews, commentaries [...]

By Brian Taylor Goldstein We teach classes, put on concerts and run festivals.  At all of these events we take photos of the participants along with the members of our group. We want to be able to use the photos on Facebook and our website.  So I am looking for a “blurb” to put in [...]

By Brian Taylor Goldstein Dear FTM Arts Law: Could owning copyrights individually (as opposed to being owned by a corporate entity) ever be a personal liability?  I understand that if copyrights are held in the name of a S-corp, C-corp, or possibly LLC, the corporate veil would shield my personal assets. There is no liability in [...]

By Brian Taylor Goldstein Dear FTM Arts Law: I am writing on behalf of our non-profit theater group. Several years ago, one of our volunteers designed a new logo for our theater. We paid her $500. At the time, she was friends with our Artistic Director, but they had a falling out. She recently sent [...]

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 [...]