A while back I got into a big discussion with some fellow musicians over the subject of what was apparently a recent development in the copyright status of traditional Irish tunes. At the risk of mangling the discussion (it was a couple of months ago and my memory is clouded), one friend said that someone of high rank in our small music world had managed to take claim of the copyrights of essentially the entire body of Irish traditional music, and had made a tidy profit selling the them to someone else. I'm no music business whiz by any means, and don't keep up to date on the news, but based on the one class I took on the subject, I argued that it wasn't possible as, at least in the US, all traditional music is public domain and no one would be allowed to do such a thing, or at the very least, they wouldn't be allowed to collect licensing fees or anything. However, a while later I saw some article put out by a small organization relating their troubles with the new license fees they had to pay to have traditional musicians play in their venue - it didn't go into detail, but it did give some evidence to my friends claim.
Does anyone know much about this? Since then I haven't been able to find any other information about it, and even Google hasn't helped me much. I mean, how could that have happened? If someone or some organization (Comhaltas?!) does own the copyright and is collecting license fees in Ireland, are they indeed affiliated with ASCAP, BMI or SESAC and currently collecting here in the US as well?
The one thing that occurred to me that might corroborate this fact is how often CDs put out by groups and artists in the past few years have, instead of a listing of each tune, one general title for the whole set that oftentimes isn't the even the title of one of the tunes, but some clever amalgam. Is this a legitimate way of getting around having to pay licensing fees, if indeed you must?
If anyone knows more about this and knows where to get the official word, I'd really appreciate it. I'm not releasing an album soon, but when the time comes, I'm not interested in paying fees to someone for something they didn't compose nor have any moral right to!
hi clish,
this has been discussed here quite alot.
the short answer is ( i think!) that your friend is wrong. everything eventually going public domain, so a tune from 1700s etc- no-one has a claim on the original
however, once a piece becomes public domain, there is an issue over the arrangement of that piece.
take any very old piece. if you mix it up in any way, away from the "received" version, youve composed an arrangement, and as such you would be entitled to arrangers royalties if it was played on the TV etc,.
arrangements are graded, the further they stretch the tune away from the original, the higher the grade, and the greater the arrangement royalty.
some artistes (no names here...) try it on, and register every tune they record with themselves as arranger, even if they play the tune straight. they are usually found out, and wouldnt get a fee on those arrangements
if you play in a session an old tune that you copied from a Planxty version of the tune, there has been a public performance of a copyrighted arrangement, and this is where licencing comes in.
this doesnt cover everything you ask about, but i'm no expert so ill stop here.
there must be something on the ASCAP site about this, if not look forPRS or MCPS (uk equivalent)
music copyright is a boring nitpicky minefield, but it has to be done............
as far as the renaming of tunes goes, i dont think it is connected. i would say this is a way to con the consumer into buying the same old bunch of tunes by a new bunch of drunks.
or it could be that people just dont know the names, or avoid using them for fear of getting it wrong, or just have working titles for sets.
The rolling stones made and continue to make a lot of money out of copywriting music they didn't write. But with diddley music, the amount of money is so small that really, it doesn't matter
Yes, it doesn't really matter. As soon as you play a trad tune and put any sort of arrangement to it, chords or whatever it is then a trad tune arranged by you. As Llig says, the amount you make on that arrangement is tiny, even if you sell 10's of thousands of CD's.
As for calling a recorded set by a set name that is one of my personal hates. Not because the musicians are trying it on, the sets are often in the sleeve, but if you buy from itunes you can't find the tune names. Not a huge deal I know but personally I like to know the tune names. I would be amazed though if that was to avoid playing the MCPS bill though, the money involved is just too small.
If you make a good faith effort to find the author of a tune, or find it in an old enough source, you can record or play it in good faith without owing anyone anything. No one can copyright a tune in the public domain. What they can copyright is their particular arrangement of the tune, but unless you are copying something where everyone in your band is playing note for note what they heard on the latest Solas album, you have nothing to worry about.
I have heard about ASCAP going after people for playing session music in some spots, but here locally, even when the bar owner was in battle with ASCAP over the playing of copyrighted material in his bar (a fight he ended up losing), no one even blinked or said a word to him when the session continued at the bar throughout the fray.
I would have thought the practice of inventing a name for a set of trad tunes is precisely to do with copyright. That's the artist saying 'this isn't the old jig xyz or whatever but my new arrangement and interpretation' etc. They are trying to establish rights over trad tunes by calling them something else.
I believe Paddy Maloney has the copyright to The Salamanca Reel to name one and a lot of O'Carolin's tunes.
There is also the 70 yr rule which I think is under review whereby a piece of original music is attributed to the artists estate until 70 yrs after there death.
I thought I wrote a great reel once until I heard it the next day on Radio na G - plonker!
Tony Blackburn used one of my jokes on Radio One in the late 60s without my permission. Couldn't touch the b*ast*ard for it though. There'll be a next time...
Anyone who thinks that there is no money to be made or saved... is wrong. The issue is not in recordings, but in live performance. I would estimate 500 trad gigs per weekend worldwide, around 250000 of them a year. Royalties worldwide on live performances of trad are a 2'500'000euro affair.
A member of this board who is well known in trad circles told me he makes around 500quid a year just on royalties. Other pro musicians who have compositions and arrangements have quoted similar or higher figures to me.
When you organise a trad event (in France and Switzerland at the very least), you get to pay an amount which is either a percentage of revenue, expenses or a fixed amount for smaller events. You can count on a minimum of around 100 euros/60 pounds. Of that, around 20euros goes to the collecting agency and the rest goes back to the composers and arrangers (and it most cases, it really does - if you are the only band lined up and you play only your own compositions, that's 80 extra euros - do 20 gigs a year and it adds up...).
I doubt any organiser would sneer at saving 80 euros - which, provided all the played music is in the public domain and that the arrangements have not been registered with the collecting agency, should NOT be payed (although you can count on the collecting agency to be sniffing around with its money-grabbing hands).
In Switzerland, they do not ask for playlists for small events. That's all very nice, but it means they don't know who to redistribute the money to. F*** that. It is then redistributed according to a ratio of radio airtime. Hear much trad on mainstream radio? Didn't think so.
In France, if you play only public domain works and one composition, the composer gets the entirety of the sum (although depending on the gig, it may be worthwhile for organisers to pay a fee which is adjusted with regard to the proportion of PD work).
Likewise, if you play only PD work under your own arrangement, you get the entirety of the sum.
This is a responsability for bands and organisers.
a) to ensure that no more money than necessary is paid by organisers
b) to ensure that any money that is paid is at least redistributed back into the trad world
c) to ensure that any money that is paid is redistributed back to the rightful owners (if you play a liz carrol tune - assuming she has copyrighted them - she should get money for that)
d) to agree on what is being filled out and why.
Oh and... "traditionnal" does not "legally" imply public domain. Some might argue that morally it should. Regardless, when talking with collecting agencies and with the agreement of the band, tell them its all public domain and that they are not getting anything.
"Anyone who thinks that there is no money to be made or saved... is wrong"
I didn't notice anyone saying that. The money to be made in trad is very small though. Minute even. You'll find that the only money of any significance comes from the original materiel, not the trad tunes. Even at that, you say the board member makes £500 a year and say he's a professional musician. Say your avarage pro traddie does 100 gigs a year that £5 a gig for PRS. Whoopy - order the Aston Martin.
Yes, peanuts. There is not 100 euro up for grabs unless the overall door takings are about 3,300 euro which isn't a small gig. PRS is charged at about 3% of door takings.
In Switzerland and France, the percentage is higher and is charged on the maximum of takings and expenses.
Small events get forfeit amounts the minimum of which is 30euro.
The last gig I organised was 100 entries (which I would consider very small) and will be costing 57chf (30euro) - but only because we had large amount of public domain work played. Had all the music been under copyright, we would have been looking at 80€
That must be a bit of a strain on small venues where you are Tirno. Luckily here it's not so bad. 100 people is generally a pub gig here and I've never done a PRS form in my life for a pub gig as far as I can remember. PRS is charged to the pub here, or at least it was while i ran one up to four years ago. Then we were charged if we had a Juke box, TV, and live music. Then it went by how many seats we had. For us it was about £750 per year. They are trying to tighten things up here though so there may be future pains.
Copyright on traditional tunes?
Copyright on traditional tunes?
A while back I got into a big discussion with some fellow musicians over the subject of what was apparently a recent development in the copyright status of traditional Irish tunes. At the risk of mangling the discussion (it was a couple of months ago and my memory is clouded), one friend said that someone of high rank in our small music world had managed to take claim of the copyrights of essentially the entire body of Irish traditional music, and had made a tidy profit selling the them to someone else. I'm no music business whiz by any means, and don't keep up to date on the news, but based on the one class I took on the subject, I argued that it wasn't possible as, at least in the US, all traditional music is public domain and no one would be allowed to do such a thing, or at the very least, they wouldn't be allowed to collect licensing fees or anything. However, a while later I saw some article put out by a small organization relating their troubles with the new license fees they had to pay to have traditional musicians play in their venue - it didn't go into detail, but it did give some evidence to my friends claim.
Does anyone know much about this? Since then I haven't been able to find any other information about it, and even Google hasn't helped me much. I mean, how could that have happened? If someone or some organization (Comhaltas?!) does own the copyright and is collecting license fees in Ireland, are they indeed affiliated with ASCAP, BMI or SESAC and currently collecting here in the US as well?
The one thing that occurred to me that might corroborate this fact is how often CDs put out by groups and artists in the past few years have, instead of a listing of each tune, one general title for the whole set that oftentimes isn't the even the title of one of the tunes, but some clever amalgam. Is this a legitimate way of getting around having to pay licensing fees, if indeed you must?
If anyone knows more about this and knows where to get the official word, I'd really appreciate it. I'm not releasing an album soon, but when the time comes, I'm not interested in paying fees to someone for something they didn't compose nor have any moral right to!
# Posted on October 10th 2009 by strawberriesinthesaltsea
Re: Copyright on traditional tunes?
hi clish,
this has been discussed here quite alot.
the short answer is ( i think!) that your friend is wrong. everything eventually going public domain, so a tune from 1700s etc- no-one has a claim on the original
however, once a piece becomes public domain, there is an issue over the arrangement of that piece.
take any very old piece. if you mix it up in any way, away from the "received" version, youve composed an arrangement, and as such you would be entitled to arrangers royalties if it was played on the TV etc,.
arrangements are graded, the further they stretch the tune away from the original, the higher the grade, and the greater the arrangement royalty.
some artistes (no names here...) try it on, and register every tune they record with themselves as arranger, even if they play the tune straight. they are usually found out, and wouldnt get a fee on those arrangements
if you play in a session an old tune that you copied from a Planxty version of the tune, there has been a public performance of a copyrighted arrangement, and this is where licencing comes in.
this doesnt cover everything you ask about, but i'm no expert so ill stop here.
there must be something on the ASCAP site about this, if not look forPRS or MCPS (uk equivalent)
music copyright is a boring nitpicky minefield, but it has to be done............
as far as the renaming of tunes goes, i dont think it is connected. i would say this is a way to con the consumer into buying the same old bunch of tunes by a new bunch of drunks.
or it could be that people just dont know the names, or avoid using them for fear of getting it wrong, or just have working titles for sets.
# Posted on October 11th 2009 by rumpole
Re: Copyright on traditional tunes?
The rolling stones made and continue to make a lot of money out of copywriting music they didn't write. But with diddley music, the amount of money is so small that really, it doesn't matter
# Posted on October 11th 2009 by ...
Re: Copyright on traditional tunes?
Yes, it doesn't really matter. As soon as you play a trad tune and put any sort of arrangement to it, chords or whatever it is then a trad tune arranged by you. As Llig says, the amount you make on that arrangement is tiny, even if you sell 10's of thousands of CD's.
As for calling a recorded set by a set name that is one of my personal hates. Not because the musicians are trying it on, the sets are often in the sleeve, but if you buy from itunes you can't find the tune names. Not a huge deal I know but personally I like to know the tune names. I would be amazed though if that was to avoid playing the MCPS bill though, the money involved is just too small.
# Posted on October 11th 2009 by bogman
Re: Copyright on traditional tunes?
Here:
https://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9908&L=IRTRAD-L&D=0&T=0&P=28377
is reported the agreement that CCE struck with IMRO (Irish Music Rights Organisation) a decade ago.
My understanding is that this protects any performance of trad music within CCE, but anyone not affiliated with CCE remains at the mercy of IMRO. I will be obliged for any clarification about the situation either in Ireland or outside.
This is also related, though I can't say that it tells me much:
http://historical-debates.oireachtas.ie/D/0559/D.0559.200212100113.html
# Posted on October 11th 2009 by sixholes
Re: Copyright on traditional tunes?
If you make a good faith effort to find the author of a tune, or find it in an old enough source, you can record or play it in good faith without owing anyone anything. No one can copyright a tune in the public domain. What they can copyright is their particular arrangement of the tune, but unless you are copying something where everyone in your band is playing note for note what they heard on the latest Solas album, you have nothing to worry about.
I have heard about ASCAP going after people for playing session music in some spots, but here locally, even when the bar owner was in battle with ASCAP over the playing of copyrighted material in his bar (a fight he ended up losing), no one even blinked or said a word to him when the session continued at the bar throughout the fray.
# Posted on October 11th 2009 by AlBrown
Re: Copyright on traditional tunes?
I would have thought the practice of inventing a name for a set of trad tunes is precisely to do with copyright. That's the artist saying 'this isn't the old jig xyz or whatever but my new arrangement and interpretation' etc. They are trying to establish rights over trad tunes by calling them something else.
# Posted on October 12th 2009 by the wounded hussar
Re: Copyright on traditional tunes?
I believe Paddy Maloney has the copyright to The Salamanca Reel to name one and a lot of O'Carolin's tunes.
There is also the 70 yr rule which I think is under review whereby a piece of original music is attributed to the artists estate until 70 yrs after there death.
I thought I wrote a great reel once until I heard it the next day on Radio na G - plonker!
# Posted on October 12th 2009 by iwerzon
Re: Copyright on traditional tunes?
Tony Blackburn used one of my jokes on Radio One in the late 60s without my permission. Couldn't touch the b*ast*ard for it though. There'll be a next time...
# Posted on October 12th 2009 by Steve Shaw
Re: Copyright on traditional tunes?
Check out this link.
http://comhaltas.ie/music/treoir/detail/irish_traditional_music_must_not_be_licensed/
For writers of new music within the Irish idiom .....waste of time?
Geoff
# Posted on October 13th 2009 by geoff88
Re: Copyright on traditional tunes?
Anyone who thinks that there is no money to be made or saved... is wrong. The issue is not in recordings, but in live performance. I would estimate 500 trad gigs per weekend worldwide, around 250000 of them a year. Royalties worldwide on live performances of trad are a 2'500'000euro affair.
A member of this board who is well known in trad circles told me he makes around 500quid a year just on royalties. Other pro musicians who have compositions and arrangements have quoted similar or higher figures to me.
When you organise a trad event (in France and Switzerland at the very least), you get to pay an amount which is either a percentage of revenue, expenses or a fixed amount for smaller events. You can count on a minimum of around 100 euros/60 pounds. Of that, around 20euros goes to the collecting agency and the rest goes back to the composers and arrangers (and it most cases, it really does - if you are the only band lined up and you play only your own compositions, that's 80 extra euros - do 20 gigs a year and it adds up...).
I doubt any organiser would sneer at saving 80 euros - which, provided all the played music is in the public domain and that the arrangements have not been registered with the collecting agency, should NOT be payed (although you can count on the collecting agency to be sniffing around with its money-grabbing hands).
In Switzerland, they do not ask for playlists for small events. That's all very nice, but it means they don't know who to redistribute the money to. F*** that. It is then redistributed according to a ratio of radio airtime. Hear much trad on mainstream radio? Didn't think so.
In France, if you play only public domain works and one composition, the composer gets the entirety of the sum (although depending on the gig, it may be worthwhile for organisers to pay a fee which is adjusted with regard to the proportion of PD work).
Likewise, if you play only PD work under your own arrangement, you get the entirety of the sum.
This is a responsability for bands and organisers.
a) to ensure that no more money than necessary is paid by organisers
b) to ensure that any money that is paid is at least redistributed back into the trad world
c) to ensure that any money that is paid is redistributed back to the rightful owners (if you play a liz carrol tune - assuming she has copyrighted them - she should get money for that)
d) to agree on what is being filled out and why.
Oh and... "traditionnal" does not "legally" imply public domain. Some might argue that morally it should. Regardless, when talking with collecting agencies and with the agreement of the band, tell them its all public domain and that they are not getting anything.
# Posted on October 13th 2009 by Tirno
Re: Copyright on traditional tunes?
"Anyone who thinks that there is no money to be made or saved... is wrong"
I didn't notice anyone saying that. The money to be made in trad is very small though. Minute even. You'll find that the only money of any significance comes from the original materiel, not the trad tunes. Even at that, you say the board member makes £500 a year and say he's a professional musician. Say your avarage pro traddie does 100 gigs a year that £5 a gig for PRS. Whoopy - order the Aston Martin.
# Posted on October 13th 2009 by bogman
Re: Copyright on traditional tunes?
Taking about PRS money above....
# Posted on October 13th 2009 by bogman
Re: Copyright on traditional tunes?
As I said, there is around 100euros per (small) gig up for grabs. Much larger sums for "real" audiences (say starting at 500 people). Peanuts?
# Posted on October 13th 2009 by Tirno
Re: Copyright on traditional tunes?
the claim was that the amounts involved are so small that they don't matter.
# Posted on October 13th 2009 by Tirno
Re: Copyright on traditional tunes?
they matter very much to organisers and musicians
# Posted on October 13th 2009 by Tirno
Re: Copyright on traditional tunes?
Yes, peanuts. There is not 100 euro up for grabs unless the overall door takings are about 3,300 euro which isn't a small gig. PRS is charged at about 3% of door takings.
# Posted on October 13th 2009 by bogman
Re: Copyright on traditional tunes?
In Switzerland and France, the percentage is higher and is charged on the maximum of takings and expenses.
Small events get forfeit amounts the minimum of which is 30euro.
The last gig I organised was 100 entries (which I would consider very small) and will be costing 57chf (30euro) - but only because we had large amount of public domain work played. Had all the music been under copyright, we would have been looking at 80€
# Posted on October 13th 2009 by Tirno
Re: Copyright on traditional tunes?
That must be a bit of a strain on small venues where you are Tirno. Luckily here it's not so bad. 100 people is generally a pub gig here and I've never done a PRS form in my life for a pub gig as far as I can remember. PRS is charged to the pub here, or at least it was while i ran one up to four years ago. Then we were charged if we had a Juke box, TV, and live music. Then it went by how many seats we had. For us it was about £750 per year. They are trying to tighten things up here though so there may be future pains.
# Posted on October 13th 2009 by bogman
Re: Copyright on traditional tunes?
change a note here and there and rename it slightly.
That's all you need to copyright it. Our Church Music Sausage Mill in Chicago does it all the time.
# Posted on October 14th 2009 by zippydw