My music used in unusual film

They used it without approval or paying you?

 

That’s not good. My advice is not to put anything out to the public that you don’t want used by someone. Every piece of music I put out is registered with the copyright office and even that isn’t a guarantee that someone won’t use it without your permission. You should contact the people who made the video and politely suggest that they remove your music from their video or try to arrange compensation for its use. If it’s really that important to you and you want to pursue legal action then make sure you get a lawyer who specializes in copyright law. Also make sure you have time stamped originals of the tracks. This problem is rampant in the music world and regretfully unless you have enough time and money to follow up there isn’t a great deal of recourse available. To make things worse, it appears that the makers of the video aren’t from the States so that really makes it tough. Good luck and sorry to hear that again, original music is being used without permission.

 

David is a music professional who has licensed music for film and TV before. He knows about licensing and such. And, I don't think he'd post it if it wasn't legit. He'd be sending a C&D letter.

Sometimes if it's a not for profit film, you'll send stuff and hope they use it. Then you count on performance royalties to give you a little income. That is if they submit a cue sheet to the PRO's. It's also free advertising. Someone could hear it and want something for another project.

I sent an entire library of music to a newsmagazine show. Gave them a gratis sync and master license, just make sure it's on the cue sheet. Only knew it was used when it aired, or when it showed up on my PRO domestic distribution.

Best not to jump to conclusions until you have all the facts.

 

Congrats David.

 

That's actually pretty cool David. The music is a nice background for the film. Is all of the music after :28 yours?

 

Nobody here ever does that.

And thanks for the little bit if insight.

 

Good flick

 

I get those all the time. A lot of the film and tv stuff I did are owned (pub and master) by the studio. So, they reuse it in another production and they don't have to tell me. If they license it to someone else, I'll get a third of the sync fee as my writer's share.
But for in house use, I just see it on my PRO statement/check.

 

@davidKOS is your music available in a library? Can you enlighten us a little on the process you went through to put your music in the position to be used like the example you posted?

And congrats! Sounded great, too.

 

I get that channel. So of course this will come on while I'm sleeping. Nice to see you getting credit when you aren't even looking for it.

 

Ok, cool. Yea, they licensed it, just no one told you, lol. The way it was posted, I was thinking it just showed up.

Good you got paid. My wife did a film, she was SAG, the whole nine yards, she was supposed to get residuals, we used to see the movie on TV quite a bit (one of those made for TV movies they kept recycling for years) and never got paid. Long story, hollywood book keeping. SAG got on them, they sent a check once, it was like for a dollar, lol.

 

I don't watch TV and love reading my PRO statements and discovering the bizarre shows that exist and deemed my music worthy of use. For a long time, "Southern Fried Homicide" was my favorite title that showed up on there, but it was overtaken handily by "Hayate the Combat Butler."