ok - so the costs arent crazy then? Ricky Gervais doing his dirty harry impression in The Office is a negligeble cost (if any) to the production of that show, compared to the other costs.
Song lyrics on TV - do you need permision? Page 2
Re: Costs. Now that I can't tell you. I told them it was a small project. They may have a sliding scale depending on the audience and medium. Best thing may be to contact the copyright holders of a song you're interested in and ask their rates. I know someone who had a whole song waived free for a short story. I had snippets. Ask and let us know, too?
i suppose my interest was more based around whether its off putting to TV companies if a script has two or three lines in it that are going to need permission granted ..... or whether its a far bigger deal setting a sitcom in an expensive location than it is having your character do a few Freddie Mercury lines when it comes to off putting costs.
On a similar vein; what about using characters belonging to organisations, ie if i wanted Ronald McDonald to appear in a scene, would I get away with it? Or if not, and I changed his name to Roland Mc Dougal, but he was a similar looking clown, would that be a copyright infringement?
If the character is 'recognisable' and is copyrighted, then yep, it's infringement. Not even a name change will save you. As far as I'm aware.
What if the clown dressed as Michael Bolton and quoted Clint Eastwood? Could you throw them off the scent that way?
Or just kill the guy with the copyright, wait 70 years and get it for free
Would there be a copyright problem if A. there was a scene in TESCO, and B there was a chaacter who was obsessed with Lemmings (there's a C and a D etc. too )
I didn't want to start a new thread but this seems to be the closest to my question.
If you want to use a piece of recorded music in a stage play do you need specific permission?
Would royalties be determined by certain criteria or is there a blanket fee?
Do I just have to contact the PRS?
Quote: SlagA @ February 1 2008, 11:30 PM GMTBut I tried it with a Gary Numan lyric and the cost although reasonable (100 quid per thousand copies of a print run) was beyond my resources.
That sounds pretty steep to me.
And I was only quoting two lines from "Are Friends electric?" for one chapter's epigraph.
But I got around it by creating a fictitious band and quoting their (or my) lyrics instead.
But does anyone know the answer to my question?
I don't know the answer to it, Chappers, but the PRS would be the ideal place. I suspect it's a blanket fee, the use of part of a song would (most likely) apply as if it were the whole song that was used, to avoid complications.
Has the song got to be a particular version? If you can get it covered by someone local, either pre-recorded or sung live, I think the rules change again. And in that circumstance I sure the theatre's music licence covers that.
Quote: Chappers @ March 30 2010, 12:48 PM BSTBut does anyone know the answer to my question?
I should think if the venue is licenced to play music, it would be ok.
Such as pubs, or some of them, are licensed to play music as are supermarkets.