Legalities of music
 

I am going to be shooting a few wedding videos down the road and was wondering what everyone's opinions are on music. I saw a video done by a wedding videographer which used songs by Enya, Prince, etc... This was also in his demo video. I highly doubt he went out and payed royalties to each recording company.

Is this common practice? Can I get away with it or should I just go with the royalty free route?

Bottom line, you might get away with it, but it is illegal. You put yourself, and your business/reputation in jeopardy.

For anything other than home videos that you keep for yourself, I'd recommend that you stick with the royalty-free stuff.

Vic Owen
 

If the client gives you the music from their collection and you are only putting it on the video that they are getting back, (not using for a demo tape) is that still illegal since they bought the music and it is on their wedding tape for only them and their family to see?

Since you received payment for using the copyrighted music, even though the music was given to you by the client, you are still in violation of copyright laws. In effect you used the music to create another work for compensation. If this was ok every tv ad builder would just run out to the music store to gather their stock.

I'm unsure about this.
The TV show Trigger Happy TV used to use music on the programs they broadcasted, however on the DVD a lot of the music had been changed because they couldnt get permission from whoever.
Why did they have to ask for permission to put the music on the DVD version but not to broadcast it on mainstream TV?

British broadcasting laws may be a bit different than those in the US. But here, you could not use any music in a broadcast show without permission, even incidentally. For example, if you shot a clip in a restaurant whose sound system was playing a Beatles tune and the tune was clearly audible on the clip you would either have to remove the tune from the audio or pay-up for royalties before broadcasting the clip.

That's absolutely the way it is here.