You probably know that venues where music is played to the public need a music 'public performing rights' license from one or more Performing Rights Organizations (‘P.R.O.s’), also sometimes known as ‘collecting societies’.
P.R.O.s cover the rights for public venues in one country, to host the performance in public of music by means of both musicians in person, and recorded music. Note that the term 'performance' of music refers simply to the playing of both live and recorded music, it has nothing to do with a sporting or other performance.
Playing music generally for people to listen to is all well and good for pre- and post- event, half-times, etc.
But, if someone wants to associate themselves with a piece of music they need the music owners' permission - a license.
Recording artists and songwriters regularly take action over the association between their music and people / organizations - for example 'walk on' / 'entrance' music by politicians, sports teams, or boxers. In these cases the music is being deliberately associated with the politician or athletes by being played repeatedly as they appear 'on stage'.
Politicians have been making news for
their use of music.
There have been several recent news items related to the music used by each presidential candidate in the forthcoming US election.
Beyoncé
The news around Vice President Harris was that she got permission to feature Beyoncé's song Freedom as walk-on music, and in social media clips and online adverts. It's not clear whether or not these uses were paid for, but in any event, permission was evidently sought and given.
Isaac Hayes
Former President Trump's campaign team have been in the news for receiving cease and desist letters from various musicians for repeatedly playing their songs at rallies, and even a lawsuit from the estate of Isaac Hayes regarding the use of his song Hold On, I'm Coming as walk-on music at campaign rallies.
A recent pre-trial ruling by the judge in that case has stopped the use of this track going forward, and observers say that it's likely that when the case appears before court the campaign will be also forced to take down all social media clips on which they have used that track.
Foo Fighters
The situation is further complicated by the fact that political campaigns CAN obtain blanket political use licenses from publishers and rights management companies (such as the P.R.O.'s mentioned above). Once are artist or publisher is signed with a P.R.O., all songs they represent, are generally included.
In this case, artists need to ask their publishers to remove their songs from those blanket licenses if they object to a particular candidate's use of a song.
This is what happened to the Foo Fighters song My Hero at former President Trump's campaign rallies - after initially complaining about the use, the band were informed that the music was being used under a political use license.
With nothing they could do about the already licensed use, the band decided instead to donate the fee they received for the license to Vice President Harris's campaign.
What are the implications for your music accompaniment?
Such a commotion over simple walk-on music highlights the implications for sports where music is used to accompany the sports routine.
Rather than simply 'walking on' to the music, athletes:
edit and adapt songs, potentially adding effects, beats and voiceovers, either to the track alone or as a mix or medley, which falls under the scope of a derivative work.
put the music to a synchronized repertoire of movements arranged into a choreographed, intentional, meaningful whole, and are typically judged on the quality of choreography, and demonstrating their understanding and interpretation of the music and composition. This additional layer of interpretation falls under the scope of a grand right.
Athletes also need to use an official download of the track file from the record label for non-commercial use beyond the private individual right to play the music for personal private enjoyment obtained from generally available sources such as rips off Spotify, YouTube, or CDs, as well as creating copies of their music to be used by teammates and coaches.
Several of these rights are considered very sensitive by the music industry, and obtaining them is complicated, expensive and time-consuming, with no guarantee that you will get approval, and you need to ensure that permission is obtained from all record labels and music publishers in each of the countries you are using the music.
ClicknClear's solution to this problem?
We have a two-part solution:
i) the world's largest commercial music library offering official downloads with all rights needed for sports routines pre-cleared, and
ii) online tools to help sports administrators manage music licenses in their sports from regional to international levels.
Pre-cleared music library.
Our rapidly growing catalog of tracks is already the largest commercial music library in the world at 1.5M+ tracks. Each track comes with all the rights athletes need from record labels and 100% of music publishing for USD $25 per track, per routine, per year in one country. Individually licensing music outside of our platform typically costs a minimum of 20 times more per track per routine than our licenses, plus there is additional time and overhead for all involved with no guaratnee of permission ultimately being granted.
Online Music and License Verification tools.
Self-declaration of music rights has been demonstrated not to be effective in sports, even with education (which is also an important element of our approach). ClicknClear’s LVS license verification system is currently used to check that the music rights set out above are being licensed. LVS supports all forms of legal use of music (licenses from rightsholders, either direct or through ourselves, custom original / bespoke music (containing no 3rd party elements), and public domain music (out of copyright)) and is currently used by the International Olympic Committee, International Gymnastic Federation, and the International Skating Union, amongst others.
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