Recording a Released Song

• To record a song written by, say, Bruce Springsteen, you need a mechanical license. The license, in essence, is Springsteen's permission to record a song he's written if you pay him a fee for the privilege. Simple enough, but the Boss isn't returning your phone calls.
  
  The U.S. Copyright Act also offers the option of a compulsory mechanical license, which allows anyone to record a commercially released song and sell copies of that version as long as fees are paid to the song's copyright owner, either the songwriter or whomever the writer assigned the copyright.
  
  The Copyright Office sets the fees. In 2009, the mechanical and compulsory mechanical license rates were 9.1 cents per copy for songs five minutes or less and 1.75 cents for each minute per copy for songs over five minutes, though a recording company can negotiate a different rate. A seven-minute song would require royalty payments of $.1225 per copy created, either on CD or sent as a permanent download. If you made 1,000 copies of your recording, you would owe the copyright holder $122.50.
  
  If you want to use part of a song as a ringtone, it's 24 cents per download as set by the Copyright Office. These rates are updated periodically, so it's best to check the Copyright Office website to get the latest figures (see Resources).
  
  

Performance License

• If your band performs a commercially released song at live gigs, the song's copyright owner is owed a royalty for that, too. But the club where you're playing needs a performing-rights license for the public performance, not the band.
  
  The copyright owner also receives compensation if a radio station plays your version of the song, but the performer doesn't get a dime from the station. Recordings played digitally over the Internet, however, do require payments to the performers.
  
  Songwriters and publishers don't negotiate separate licenses for radio stations, pubs or other venues. Joy Butler, author of the audio book "The Musician's Guide through the Legal Jungle," explains they instead "affiliate with performing rights societies." In the U.S., those societies are the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP); Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI), and SESAC. SESAC originally stood for Society of European Stage Authors & Composers back in the 1930s, but now only goes by the acronym, according to SESAC's website.
  
  "The societies often negotiate blanket licenses with radio stations, television networks and restaurants that allow those organizations to perform any song in the catalog of the performing rights society issuing the blanket license," Butler says.
  
  Payouts are figured by samplings taken during a year and extrapolated to determine how often a song was played or performed. Earnings are based on the estimated frequency of performance per song. BMI requires radio stations under its license to keep a log for three days of each song played, "with different stations covering each day of the year," according to its website.
  
  

Commercial Recordings in Film

• An indie-film producer who wants to use a hit recording of a song for a soundtrack must negotiate with the copyright holder of the recording, usually the performing artist or the record company. The Copyright Act requires a synchronization license for any musical recording used with visual images, such as a film, commercial, video, web video or other audio/visual production. There are no set fees for this license. If it's a popular recording and it's central to a major-release film, the fees easily can reach five figures.
  
  

Fair Use

• To use a portion of a song in a program or podcast as part of a review of music, no license is required. This falls under the Fair Use doctrine of copyright law that allows excerpts of a work to be included for editorial purposes. There is no regulation on how much is too much to excerpt before it becomes a copyright infringement, but it's best to keep it short.