Hey man...okay basically...you need to get the producer/artist's permission to use the track in your movie...unless it's been composed/produced for over 50 years. That's why you hear all those house dj bastards 'remixing' Mozart and friends.

"My music is my head, my head is out of wack, my wack is my sound, my sound is in your head"

This has always been a grey area for me - If I use, say, Also Sprach Zarathustra in a Motion Picture, do I need to get it re-recorded and have the artists sign a release, or can I use a recording from back in the day that I had no part in?

Morgneto, Master of Morgnetism

The laws a very clear and available on many web sites.

Copyright expires between 50 and 75 years after the authors death - there are exceptions so it's best to research the piece of music rather than calculate the authors death.

The recording of a piece of music is different - it can be 50 to 75 years after the death of the arranger or conductor or it can remain in copyright as long as the orchestra (not the original players but the orchestra as an entity) stays in existence. "Back in the day" is too vague. I made music videos in the 80's, my niece thinks that was "back in the day" - I suspect a lot of people posting here think the same. It's best to research the piece of music and the recording on a case by case basis rather than make assumptions on generalities.

You can find out who the publisher is by using ASCAP's Clearance Express (ACE) at ?url? http://www.ascap.com?/url?. Songs that are not represented by ASCAP might be found at the National Music Publishers' Association "Songfile" website ?url? http://www.nmpa.org?/url?. You will be provided with a contact at the publisher's Business Affairs or Licensing Department.

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The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.
Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)

I try to be very careful about these things because there are music copyright holders out there who are VICIOUS about enforcing them. If you're willing to do some serious audio cleanup, one place you can go for public domain recordings of classical music is the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project for old wax cylinder recordings: http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/ You can download public-domain WAV files, but the cleaned versions that you can download are Creative Commons ShareAlike licensed, so if you use those you can't sell your movie.

Yes; it's not enough that the music itself is public domain. The recording ALSO has to be public domain unless you do it yourself.

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Andrew Gingerich
Exploding Goldfish Films
Check out my vodcast on iTunes: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=96931870
and my blog at http://www.exgfilms.com

The 50-75 years is right. Remember it is from their death.

The correspondent was right about the copyright holders coming chasing. Some view the airplay as a good advert, particularly where the whole piece/song is not played in full or if the quality is a little off. However, people will get hacked off if you use their material.

Safer to get the royalty free, be it free of for a fee. Trouble is the free stuff is often poor and the charges are often expensive. It may be that www.gosounds.com is a good option as it appears to be cheap but high quality. It could do with more of a range of genres, but it appears to be building and looking for other music contributors.

A good site for copyright information is www.britishacademy.com, which is the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters. They are all linked up to other countries like the US and Japan.

Le B