I've always wondered....

[threehills]

I was just looking for "Lifelike feat. Kris Menace - Discopolis" as it was featured in the "Is this why people like latin girls thread"....there are at least 7 remixes I have found so far. My question is, how does copyrighting work with this. Does someone who remixes a track have to pay royalties to the original producer? Does the original producer, or his/her label send the orginal out to others and ask them to remix it? Or do the people doing the remixing, typically hear it themselves and make the remix out of their own free will? And...what exactly is the difference between a remix and an dub?

[KinKyJ]

Re: I've always wondered....

Hmmm, interesting question. I know that if you remix a song just like that and release it, you violate the copyright. You have to get the original artist's permission (cfr the family of Elvis refusing Junkie XL permission to remix "A little less conversation" because of the word "junkie").

Apart from that, you have to cough up money or you'll get the RIAA (or your local clone) on your ass.

Here's an article that might be interesting since there's been a discussion going on about this.

As for who asks who: I guess that goes either way.

-edit- I don't know if this has been clarified in the past already, but I've often wondered about what the deal with downloading sets is. Is that legal? And if yes, why?

[Lorn]

Re: I've always wondered....

Promotional?

[SyntaxTerror]

Re: I've always wondered....

Apart from that, you have to cough up money or you'll get the RIAA (or your local clone) on your ass.

Are you sure about this? There's no reason why you have to have any association at all with the RIAA if you don't want to as far as I know. Can you explain this a little better?

From what I can tell with interviews, producers consider remixing as "work". From the cases I've seen they get invited to remix the originals and get paid a couple of grand for it.

As for dubs, well essentially they're remixes, but are a more stripped down, drums only affair (or these days just vocal-less).

Bootlegs are obviously no permission type affairs, meaning the producer has voilated copyright rules. Not sure on the legality of selling these. Most record shops seem to flog them even though by my thought process they are illegal.

And threehills in terms of how they're made, if they have permission to do it they'll prolly get the project file from logic or whatever program it was made in, otherwise the bootlegger would be trying to chop the track up in to bits from the actual song, and work from there or remake sound of the elements.

This however, is mostly guesswork so I could be wrong.

[day_for_night]

Re: I've always wondered....

a dub tends to mean much reduced or eliminated vocals from an originally vocal-filled track.

[feather]

Re: I've always wondered....

Syntax sounds like he got most of it right. That's how I understand these things too.

In Singapore there's some organization that keeps track of broadcast material and supposedly hound people for royalties or some crap. I've been told that's why radio programmers have to keep a list of airplay tunes and submit them; and the same shit is suppose to apply to a DJ in a club (all heresay, dunno if this happens elsewhere, maybe someone can verify) but who's gonna keep track of a night's tracklist, certainly not the DJ (besides the trainspotters on MS!).

[KinKyJ]

Re: I've always wondered....

Are you sure about this? There's no reason why you have to have any association at all with the RIAA if you don't want to as far as I know. Can you explain this a little better?

Well, the RIAA does look after the copyright and royalties, don't they? At least, that's what their Belgian equivalent does. Legislation could be different from one country to another. I'm not really a lawyer, y'know?

[threehills]

Re: I've always wondered....

Syntax, thanks for the explanation.

[FM]

Re: I've always wondered....

It can go both ways, but the re-mixer is seeked out and made an offer to remix said track (especially when one is "in demand")...once submitted it usually then becomes property of the label. Otherwise so-and-so could remix (or offer to remix) a track and the deal goes from there...if rejected, it can just go in the remixer's record bag for his/her playing only.

Said track may have a deadline to be done by naturally so the release can get pressed and put out. Many variables as to how many remixes are done before releasing (between offers, finding people, timeframes, etc.), or as you may see over time, the track is released several times with different remixes "refreshing" it up.

Dub was pretty much explained.

White label's/bootlegs are just that...full sampling/copyright violations (either just done, or offered to the label and rejected)...but the kicker usually is that the artist name isn't on it (it's a made-up name, nothing's printed on it, etc.). How they typically get away with it is by pressing up lower numbers and selling them to record shops...where when all is said and done, it's a relatively small range of break-even/profit/loss. By the same token, white's have been also pressed of tracks that some artist put out on the Net for feedback/testing (independent), and sold by the bootlegger to make a profit...so if you're shopping a track to labels and they happen to catch it floating around like that, you may have just lost that deal...so beware on that token. As syntax said, it could be chopping up original samples, re-layering stuff, or through a few "contacts" getting some of the samples and re-doing it themselves.

[Lorn]

Re: I've always wondered....

So where are all these edits gonna fit in?

[SyntaxTerror]

Re: I've always wondered....

Well, the RIAA does look after the copyright and royalties, don't they? At least, that's what their Belgian equivalent does. Legislation could be different from one country to another. I'm not really a lawyer, y'know?

In Australia it's called ARIA, and the way it works is like this.

If you're a radio station you need to pay royalties to the record labels of all the different songs you play.

So you can either:
1) Keep a list of everything you play and seek individual permission and pay them individually the royalties for playing the tracks. Or...

2) Pay your ARIA (or RIAA) membership and the organisation will distribute money to the labels which are a member of their organisation evenly. They consider things will be a fair spread amongst the labels which are a member of them.

ARIA also expects shops that play music cds to pay a fee, companies with on-hold music, etc.

To my understanding Kinky, if you don't want to deal with ARIA (or RIAA) then you don't have to. You just have to go and do all the hard work yourself and get the permission and pay royalties for everything individually yourself.

Same would apply to remixing I would imagine, as long as Diggers says it's OK for me to remix his track I don't really have to run it by anyone else (expect the label bosses I guess)

As I said earlier, I could be wrong on all this too and I'm far from being an expert on this stuff. Just an outside observer like the rest of us here.

[jarble187]

Re: I've always wondered....

How they typically get away with it is by pressing up lower numbers and selling them to record shops...where when all is said and done, it's a relatively small range of break-even/profit/loss.

When Cass was still running the fire label, at one time they were releasing limited edition records under the label Fire 999. As I understood, the records contained copyrighted music, but since under 1,000 copies were being pressed, it was legal to sell them.