You'd think that music industry professionals, of all people, would have got the idea that they can't use each other's work without permission by now...
...but a flurry of recent lawsuits suggests that they are still having problems.
Whether its a full-blown song, samples of vocals or instrumentals from a song, beats, or even 'stems' - the individual solo instrument channels on a mixing desk that are used by producers to build up a recording - permission (and usually financial remuneration) is needed if you use someone else's work.
All these things are currently being argued about in the courts.
Most recently Jon Hume, a songwriter and producer, alleges that Universal Music allowed stems that he created when contributing to the writing of the song Be Alright, released by Dean Lewis in 2018, to be used in that release. So, for once, this isn't a dispute over songwriting - Hume has a 50% ownership of the publishing (songwriting) copyright to Be Aright. Hume says that Universal told him that his original stems would be re-recorded rather than used 'as is' in the released track. In fact, he found out in 2023 that more than half of the stems used to build up the released track were his - so he is suing.
There are similar active lawsuits between 2Point9 Records and a Sony Music label, related to a DJ remix of Jay Sean's track Ride It, as well as a Sebastian Graux complaint about Universal Music and Feid releasing three tracks containig Graux's guitar loops without permission or compensation.
The first point to highlight from these cases are that its entirely possible that the infringements arose from genuine mistakes and understandings. But in copyright law, that is not a valid defence - the infringement happened and damages are due.
Secondly, these are arguments about stems, the smallest component in the making of a recording. So, as well as staying well away from uncleared sampling and software that can break tracks back down into their stemmed components unless you have a license to do that for the underlying track and song, you also need to make sure that you have licenses from the record label owning the recording AND 100% of the music publishers owning the song for each of the uses you make of music in your sport.
These uses are typically:
use an official download of the track file. Generally available sources of music such as YouTube, Spotify, downloads, or CDs simply give you the private individual right to play the music for personal enjoyment.
editing and adapting the track, adding effects, beats and VO, either to the track alone or as a mix or medley. These uses fall under the scope of a derivative work.
put the track to a choreographed routine, whether the track is used alone and unadapted, or adapted, or edited into a mix or used in a medley. This use falls under the scope of a 'Grand Right'.
create copies of the resulting music to share amongst team-members and coaches.
In particular you need to be very careful that those offering music using elements that were obviously created by others, such as cover music and pieces of music created specifically for you that use songs written by others, have the necessary permissions to use those third party elements (usually in the form of publishing licenses) plus the ability to grant you the rights you need to make use of the music they supply to you.
How you do this? Wouldn't it be really great if there was a large and fast-growing catalog of music industry tracks that came with downloads and all the rights from record labels and all songwriters to do all the things you need? And an online tool that automatically recognized the music uploaded to it, and cross checked its findings against the licenses that were also uploaded?
Well that's exactly what ClicknClear offers, help stem the flow of copyright infringement.
Our growing catalog of over 1.5 million official music industry tracks can be downloaded and licensed with all the rights that sport particpcants need, plus separate livestreaming and video-on-demand rights for event organizers.
And our online License Verification System (LVS) is an easy to use license and music management tool that operates up to global scale, to give sports administrators from international federations to regional or even single competition level an auditable trail that music licensing of all necessary rights is being verified.
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