P1. Use of music in film - legal considerations

Right of use:

The difference between publishing rights and recording rights is that for a publishing licence you need permission from the people who own the rights to the music, and for a recording licence you need permission from the artists who produced the music themselves.

To go about clearing a piece of music for you film you need to firstly find out who owns the rights to the music. If the song you want is published, you need to get rights from the publisher, and obtain a publishing licence from them. You can find out who owns the rights to the song by contacting the latest publisher, or if you know the record company you can find out their details on the website and message them. There is a company called PRS music which helps you find out who owns the rights to music. If the music hasn't yet been published, then it will probably be the composer of the music who owns the rights, and this will therefore be easier to obtain, as your film could be good promotion for their music.

You will need to get the recording licence from the rights holder (producer or record company)  if the music has been pre-recorded. If it hasn't, then you can arrange the sound recording, which gives you copyright access to the music.

If the composer has been dead for over 70 years, the copyright will have expired, but you might need to ask for clearance from the right holder in the recording.

Incidental music is music used in a film which is supposed to create a certain mood or atmosphere, and is often referred to as background music.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a type of copyright license which distributes free work, which would otherwise be copyrighted. It can also be known as 'CC' and according to Wikipedia is 'used when an author wants to give people the right to share, use and build upon work that they have created'.

According to their website, Creative Common exists to help ensure everyone 'from individual creators to large companies and institutions' get a 'simple standardized way to grant copyright permission to their creative work'.

Here are there 6 licences:

Attribution CC BY: Allows you to remix, tweak, distribute and build upon their work as long as you give credit to their original work.

 Attribution-NoDerivs CC BY-ND: Allowed for redistribution, commercial and non commercial, as long as its unchanged and you give credit to the artist. 

 Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC BY-NC-SA: Allows you to remix, tweak, distribute and build upon their work as long as you give credit to them and licence their new creations under the terms. 

 Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA:  Allows you to remix, tweak, distribute and build upon there work (for commercial purposes as well) as long as you give them credit and licence your new work under the terms. 

 Attribution-NonCommercial CC BY-NC: Allows you to remix, tweak, distribute and build upon their work, although in your new work you must acknowlege them and be non-commercial. 'They don't have to license their derivative works on the same terms.' 

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND: Allows you to download their work and share them as long as you give credit to them and don't change them in any way or use them for commercial purposes. 

My Choice of music

This is a link to the music I decided to go for:
http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html/index.html?genre=Jazz
(Mining by Moonlight)

Reason for choice of music:
I wanted to go for positive background music in my sequence, but didn't want anything too upbeat so decided to go for Jazz. I chose this song, as it adds a positive relaxing vibe to the sequence, which portrays the college to be a safe and welcoming place (or so we think).

Evidence of rights:

Sources:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/filmnetwork/filmmaking/guide/before-you-start/music-rights
http://www.bbc.co.uk/filmnetwork/filmmaking/guide/before-you-start/legal-faqs#musicvideo
https://creativecommons.org/