Music Licensing Question
 

Hello,

Hope this is the right forum.

I want to use a track off a friend's cd. Obviously, it is music not written specifically for the movie. He wants a percentage of future earnings.

What would be a fair amount?

thank you,
elmer

Hi,

It actually depends on how much you use his music in length, but I would say that max. 5% if talking in percents. I did some calculations and if I want to release a DVD of 50 minutes in length having 30 minutes of copyrighted music in it (Robbie Williams, Enya etc.) then the percent I have to pay per sale doesn't get much over 10% so your friend certainly can't ask too much from you.

Thanks for the info!

I probably will use his music nearly throughout the short film (4:13). Again, it wasn't written specifically for the movie, it's just a track off his cd.

When you speak of percentages, do you mean net receipts?

And if I use someone's music as the opening music over which credits run, is 5% a good figure for licensing?

elmer

You're welcome.

Your film is rather short and therefore the amount you pay him cannot go too high. Currently it seems like you are going to do it 'between friends' without contracts and you should be able to find some positive solution for both. However, if you're interested here's a logic that is used for calculating copyrighted music costs per sale (for example internet download and I guess it applied to DVD as well). It is based on the Nordisk Copyright Bureau in Europe, but all in all it shouldn't differ too much wherever you're located.

According to the Digital Phonogram Delivery (DPD) rule the fee for music is 12% from the sale price, but depending on the proportion used throughout the final video. For example if the video is 5 minutes long, you are using 1 minute of music in it and the final price is 15 EUR, then the author fee is calculated like this: 12% x 15 x 0.2 = 0.36 EUR where 0.2 is the ratio between the video length and music used. There is also a one-time fee which applies to copyrighted music and as an extra to the calculations above, but I believe this is not important for you at the moment.