In most cases, you can't get permission from the band - they've licensed their works to somebody else to administer, and taking that right back to allocate it to somebody privately, then put it back again is hopelessly complicated. Some artistes do keep control of their works, others just give it to somebody else. There's a lovely tale about somebody from one of the UK theatrical rights agencies, who went on holiday and spotted one of the Andrew Lloyd Webber shows being produced on the popular holiday island, when she knew that it hadn't been licensed outside of London - with the show still being on. She queried it and was told that the organiser knew Cameron MacIntosh's mother, who said he wouldn't mind!

I do know, however, of American big names who have allowed their music to be used, for a nominal $10 fee - to keep the books straight.

Wow. That's hillarious. There's a certain thing about mothers ...

Andrew

The way most record deals work is that the artists retains ownership of their work. The songs they wrote are theres to keep, but the studio, which pays for the album to be created has the rights to the recording. So yes, often times it is not enough to know the band or have permission from them, unless you get a live recording of them or they come to your studio and perform it for you.

The composer, lyricist, and publisher own the rights to the song and the label owns the rights to the recording. So you're correct, IF the recording artist actually wrote the song. But in many cases, if not in most cases, the artist or band that is recording it did not actually write the music, especially true in pop music. I think it's highly unlikely that 90% of the current "artists" on the top 100 charts could write a grocery list, much less actually compose music.

Go to the CreativeCommons web site. There are links to music sites that let you use and sync their music to your film using an attribution license. A lot of it is very good - just as long as you don't mind listening through a lot of crap.

From my experience in the music industry, at least 80% of all artists who have a recording contract of any kind also have a publishing deal of some kind, meaning that they have sold or assigned the right in their compositions to a third party as well.

The bottom line is, as others have said, is that you really need two sets of permissions to use music- the "sync" license from whoever owns or administers the composition (which can often be multiple writers and/or publisher), and a master use license from the owner of the sound recording.