Music Liscense Question

[Clampet15]

So, after two long years I am finally hitting the home stretch to finishing my first feature length. Right now I am in the post production stage of composing music for my film. My production team and I have come to the conclusion that the Beatles song Eleanore Rigby would be awesome to have as an opener. Now we know the actual song usage we could never afford for our low budget movie... and seeing how we are all musicians we think we could pull off recording it. My question however, is if we covered this song without words would we have to get the rights from the label - and if anyone knows, would It be possible to sample the actual song and create a new unique song from portions of it without acquiring rights?

 

 

- Brandon Schwindt

[Kevin Zanit]

There are always two sets of rights involved with music: The rights to use the actual recording in your film and the rights to use your own re-recording of the song in your film.

 

You need the later set of rights. These rights can be granted from the person who wrote the song (or whoever controls the rights to that song). To be frank, the odds of you getting the rights to rerecord a Beatles song on your own are non-existent.

 

You may have some luck if you utilize a service that handles this type of thing. This all costs money however.

 

 

 

Kevin Zanit

[Clampet15]

There are always two sets of rights involved with music: The rights to use the actual recording in your film and the rights to use your own re-recording of the song in your film.

 

You need the later set of rights. These rights can be granted from the person who wrote the song (or whoever controls the rights to that song). To be frank, the odds of you getting the rights to rerecord a Beatles song on your own are non-existent.

 

You may have some luck if you utilize a service that handles this type of thing. This all costs money however.

Kevin Zanit

 

Thanks for the info. I'll look into it because if I record the song myself, I would only tag a few violin riffs from the song and pretty much do everything else different with different instruments. I would hope a riff played differently, but sounding similar, would not be copy right protected.... but then again it is the Beatles.

[Dory Breaux DP]

It will cost a shitload o re-record it. BUT, a riff that sounds the same but isnt exact i think is ok... how do you think Wierd Al Yankovich gets off with all those pardays. I doubt the copyright holders would allow him to do that exactly.