Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Licensing a song/2

I wrote about a month ago about the process of licensing Randy Newman's "Something special" for a new Little Criminals disk. I finally received an answer
In order to issue you a one-time mechanical license for our minimum of 1000 units and a one-time DPD license for our minimum of 1000 units, please complete the requested information below.

The mechanical rate is dependent on the length of the composition, as per the US Copyright act. Each unit is $0.091 (9.1 cents) as long as the composition length is under 5 minutes, which your recording of "Something Special" is. 

Once licenses are issued you will pay $91.00 for a mechanical and $91.00 for a digital download (DPD) license.
The only problem with the above is the quantity: I doubt that we'll even get to 200 copies (hard and soft combined), so the above license is ten times too large. I have written back asking the publisher to lower the minimum amount but I'm not expecting too much.

In lieu of including 'Something Special', I decided to prepare my version of 'Dayton Ohio 1903', a somewhat nondescript song which earned a slightly jazzy arrangement. Thinking about it today, I realised that the opening flute lick could be harmonised, so I slightly revised my arrangement. One good thing about digital music is that I can change notes for one instrument without affecting anything else - and still have my vocals perfectly synchronised. 

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