Tuesday, April 28th, 2009
Close To You The Film Club has been working on a segment for a behind-the-scenes video that uses the Carpenters' version of Close To You ("Why do birds, suddenly appear..."). I thought it would be a good lesson for them to see what's involved in getting the rights to use actual copyrighted music.

I've been trying for several weeks to get anywhere. I've left messages with several record companies who had a hand in the record in some way. Eventually I found my way to a small studio in California that recorded the Carpenters' version of this song. I called them up and got the email of a man who works there who actually has some authority to license this song.

Two emails later, I finally got a call back today. The man was very nice, and I talked to him for about twenty minutes. I told him that I run a Film Club and that we'd like to use the song in a movie on our Premiere Night, but we do not want to distribute the song in any way (ie, we would not post the video online or sell it on DVD).

Long story short, there are more hoops we have to jump through. He said that if we were not charging for the Premiere Night, we would be able to use the song under the Fair Use policy, which is a little stretch of the usual terms, but he would have allowed it. Unfortunately, we are charging, so we do need to pursue licensing of some sort.

Although this man does have legal authority to grant us rights, he said the normal procedure is for each studio, artist, label (what have you) to get on board before permission is granted. They just are very careful about not stepping on toes of others in the industry, in case they need help someday.

The next step for us is to get in touch with someone at Warner. The guy I talked to is going to send me the name of a contact there who should be able to talk to us about this. He is not sure what they would charge, possibly as little as $50, maybe $200, maybe more. And the recording studio's fees will mirror Warner's fees, so if Warner charges us $50, we would end up paying a total of $100.

There's also the chance that we would not be able to use the original recording. Richard Carpenter almost never grants permission for the use of their recording. Sometimes he'll give prices that are ridiculously large, and sometimes he'll reject offers as much as half a million dollars. But this song has been used, and there's hope. I'm also not sure that Richard Carpenter would actually have to approve this for our use, but who knows.

We might be able to get rights to use another version of this song, it just depends on who recorded it and if we can get in touch with someone at their record company. With our budget, that's not likely.

The man I talked to today said that sometimes this song gets licensed for 40 grand, sometimes 60 grand, sometimes a quarter million dollars. There are a LOT of factors, such as what part of the movie the song plays, how much of the song is used, whether or not actors sing the song on screen, etc. There are distribution rights, online streaming rights, airplane rights, trailer rights, all kinds of rights.

There are rights that you can buy now that will cover any possible kind of distribution channel in the future, ones that have not even been thought of yet. Apparently these kinds of contracts didn't exist in the old days, so now a lot of studios are playing catch-up and are having to get new rights for songs that have been in movies for decades. It's nuts, and there is a LOT of money involved.

Anyway, it's certainly a great lesson for the kids. I am not done yet. I'll see how far I can get with Warner, and I'll post any information that I get. Good times!