L
loro
Guest
This is my first post, so hi everyone!
I’ve got a dilemma, could you help me out?
I’m a member of a local band. We’re not at all popular anywhere outside our town, and we play very rarely, and always for free. Like most of the bands do when they’re starting up, we do a lot of covers, and we’ve performed them live.
Today I found out that in order to do this legally one needs to buy licenses from appropriate record companies (and that costs quite a bit) - to pay royalites to the original composers, so I’m wondering if not doing that is a sin.
On one hand: it’s clear that one should give to Ceasar what is Ceasar’s - no matter how small band we are, and how much money the companies earn, and whether some stuff that they’re doing is moral or immoral.
On the other hand: small bands always play covers and it’s a common practice, and very few of them even think of copyright. Obviously at bigger concerts, more popular bands would have to pay the royalties etc. - but we’re gonna be playing only at a local club. And the thing is that everyone knows that small bands play covers - most of the popular artists were doing that when they were starting up, and surely few of them were paying royalties at that time - when it came to playing live - obviously it’s different when one puts in on youtube or wants to record it for an album. But I’m talking just about live performances. And also we’re not earning any money on this, and it seems that no one is hurt (well except that these people won’t get paid…)
But obviously one shouldn’t look at what most people do. Most people download music illegally and I don’t. What kind of person would I be therefore if I was breaking the copyright law in another way? And in the light of the (Earth) law it doesn’t matter if we do it non-profit, or for a small audience - it’s still a public performance, and we need to pay royalties.
And we have enough songs written by ourselves to play a set that consists only of them. But the other members of the band wouldn’t agree on that. I’ve just talked to one of them about it and he said that he’s not gonna be changing a widespread tendency, without which the musical market wouldn’t work. I might even quit the band if I have to, because obviously God is more important. But maybe I’m just exaggerating?
I’ve got a dilemma, could you help me out?
I’m a member of a local band. We’re not at all popular anywhere outside our town, and we play very rarely, and always for free. Like most of the bands do when they’re starting up, we do a lot of covers, and we’ve performed them live.
Today I found out that in order to do this legally one needs to buy licenses from appropriate record companies (and that costs quite a bit) - to pay royalites to the original composers, so I’m wondering if not doing that is a sin.
On one hand: it’s clear that one should give to Ceasar what is Ceasar’s - no matter how small band we are, and how much money the companies earn, and whether some stuff that they’re doing is moral or immoral.
On the other hand: small bands always play covers and it’s a common practice, and very few of them even think of copyright. Obviously at bigger concerts, more popular bands would have to pay the royalties etc. - but we’re gonna be playing only at a local club. And the thing is that everyone knows that small bands play covers - most of the popular artists were doing that when they were starting up, and surely few of them were paying royalties at that time - when it came to playing live - obviously it’s different when one puts in on youtube or wants to record it for an album. But I’m talking just about live performances. And also we’re not earning any money on this, and it seems that no one is hurt (well except that these people won’t get paid…)
But obviously one shouldn’t look at what most people do. Most people download music illegally and I don’t. What kind of person would I be therefore if I was breaking the copyright law in another way? And in the light of the (Earth) law it doesn’t matter if we do it non-profit, or for a small audience - it’s still a public performance, and we need to pay royalties.
And we have enough songs written by ourselves to play a set that consists only of them. But the other members of the band wouldn’t agree on that. I’ve just talked to one of them about it and he said that he’s not gonna be changing a widespread tendency, without which the musical market wouldn’t work. I might even quit the band if I have to, because obviously God is more important. But maybe I’m just exaggerating?
) concerning this. It’s just that I’m a musician from a rather artsy town in the midwest where there are multiple performances around the city any given night. I know people in bands or who are solo and perform/recorf covers all the time and I’ve never heard of one of them paying royalties. I just sort of assumed that paying royalties/getting permissing involved performing/recording on a larger scale. I guess I wasn’t terribly off the wall with respect to this. 