mechanical licence/royalties?

[handrick]

Hi,hoping you can clear something up for me.If someone wants to record a demo of one of my songs which I have previously released, do they need to obtain a mechanical licence from me/pay a fee?or is it just if the demo is released?thanksAndrew

[Casey H]

Feb 7, 2009, 4:48am, handrick wrote:Hi,hoping you can clear something up for me.If someone wants to record a demo of one of my songs which I have previously released, do they need to obtain a mechanical licence from me/pay a fee?or is it just if the demo is released?thanksAndrew Hi AndrewI can only speak to how things work in the US...If a song has previously been released (offered for sale), they are (technically) required to get a "compulsory license" and pay the statutory rate for each mechanical copy, I think right now it's 9.1 cents per CD. That being said, for demo purposes, they most likely aren't going to make many CDs so the money involved is trivial.... 100 CD's = $9.10 ...Established artists use The Harry Fox Agency to handle this but you can get a compulsory license form (plenty of samples if you surf the web) and do it yourselves. I'm fairly certain that on your own agreement you can put in any exceptions to the statutory rate, such as excluding the first N copies for promotional purposes.Overall, this is all pretty simple and hopefully shouldn't complicate anything. Doing the paperwork right is more for YOUR protection. Casey

[handrick]

Hey, thanks for the info.. looked into it here and apparently there is a small fee even to do a small demo run of around 35euro per song if they are for promotion etc.. after that its 8.5% of the cost the retailer pays for the cd, divided by the number of songs..etcspeaking of which.. this guy wants to use 3 songs off my album... it'll be kinda strange to hear almost a 3rd of my album songs sang by someone else... CheersAndrew