Copyright - music - dance dvd

[skier-hughes]

I have a client who wants to make a dance teaching dvd, anyone got an understanding of the use of copyright music on the dvd?
She has a PPL licence for her performances.

Of course I'll be editing this with Edius in the UK :)

Graham

[GrassValley_KH]

Nice save ;)

I suggest contacting the label(s) of the music you intend to use, for the definitive answer on permissions and reproduction.

[biopic]

As the the dance music is going to be "changed" from its original format (i.e. it is going to end up on a DVD) then mechanical copyright applies. This is completely separate from performance copyright, which simply gives you the right to "play" the music in public. Depending on the piece(s) there may also be issues with the composer and the musicians on the original recording. This can get very complicated and take a lot of effort to resolve I'm afraid, which is why it is often preferably to use music from a buyout library such as http://www.audiolicense.net However, that may not help you in this case. More details here: http://www.mcps-prs-alliance.co.uk.
As good Edius users, this is something we should all be aware of :)

[skier-hughes]

I'm of the opinon putting well known music into my Edius timeline for the people to dance to will be more favourable than them doing it to music they don't know..... what'll happen when they go out, on comes a piece of music and they don';t dance to it, as they learnt the dance to a piece of music they'll never get to here at a disco!!!!

MCPS website here we go.

[biopic]

Oh dear, sounds expensive :(

[Mithras]

I have a client who wants to make a dance teaching dvd, anyone got an understanding of the use of copyright music on the dvd?
She has a PPL licence for her performances.

Of course I'll be editing this with Edius in the UK :)

Graham

Dear Graham,

I have asked the very same question to MCPS and got a very favourable response. I too have been asked to make a dance DVD which will involve a lot of commercial music, so I asked at MCPS what the score was exactly. I said, for example, can I film someone dancing to Michael Jackson's thriller and turn it into a DVD to sell to a particular Dance school. They said - not a problem! There are limitations to what you can do but on the whole it is possible.
What you need is a limited Manufacture licence which you can get online at MCPS. You can't sell your DVD's in a shop! You can't have more than 120 minutes of music on the DVD! and you can't make thousands of copies, but as long as you pay the fee (around £120 for 100 DVDs) it's OK.
Give them a call .....

If you get a different response I would be very interested to know!

Cheers

[skier-hughes]

It is sounding expensive, as the idea is not just to sell the dvds to her dance groups, but to also sell on-line.

[Mithras]

It is sounding expensive, as the idea is not just to sell the dvds to her dance groups, but to also sell on-line.

I'm afraid so. I don't even think you would obtain permissions from the record labels / artists. I work in broadcast and I know the difficulty we have creating DVD's of programmes that have commercial music in them. We end up swapping for non-commercial tracks.

If you find a solution, I would be very interested to know how!

Best of Luck

[skier-hughes]

I've sent a semi detailed request in to MCPS, so when I get it back, and before I start editing with Edius, I'l let you know what they say.

Looks like the web site says, MCPS license, cost 8.5% of trade price of each dvd, along with a license per track, obtained seperately.

Graham

[skier-hughes]

Actually quite cheap.
Three very promptly replied to emails later, the scheme we'd use is the AVP scheme

http://www.mcps-prs-alliance.co.uk/musicforproducts/gipav/retailproduct/AVP/Pages/AVP.aspx

And the cost is

Assuming the published dealer price (not the retail price) was £10, and that there was 12 minutes of music in a total DVD product running time of 60minutes:

£10 / 100 x 8.5 = £0.85 = 8.5% of Published Dealer Trade Price

12mins music duration / 60mins total running duration = 0.2 = MCPS Claim

£0.85 (PDP) x 0.2 (MCPS Claim) = £0.17

Therefore, the royalty fee would be just 17 pence per unit shipped.


We would make a quarterly return of sales of each product and they will send a bill.

Hope this helps others, now where's that edius button.....

Thanks,

Graham

[Geoff]

Graham, are you sure that it isn't 8.5% of the recommended selling price? It used to be! Also, the value is calculated pre VAT if that is to be included.

Geoff

[skier-hughes]

Geoff, absolutely positive, as I put in my email to them retail price and they corrected me with their reply, which is basically what I have quoted in my last post, just changed the minutes used to apply to my situation.

I read lots of pages on MCPS, if I remember rightly some cases do use retail price, but they have lots of different chemes.

[GrassValley_KH]

Alright guys, time to wrap this up. I think most of the prominent answers are here now. :)

[skier-hughes]

Thanks for letting it run, pm me if you want to carry on with the discussion.

Graham