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Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Seeking Solicitors' Assistance In Music Licensing Concerns

By Harold Shores


Intellectual property infringements have been prevalent even before the Internet made it effortless to distribute unauthorized copies of works. People keep sharing and selling thoughts, merchandise, and even secrets unlawfully. The arrival of the Internet just made it a lot easier for them to pilfer someone else's works and spread them. Distribution, though, is not all that bad with proper licensing contract. It can even aid the author advertise his work. But all the legalities involved would make the process complicated so it is just smart to ask someone knowledgeable in that particular field or hire counsels.

Say for example you want consumers to purchase a song you wrote and recorded. Whether you do it by yourself or through a recording label, song stealing occurences are common. Even the most popular artists these days have accused or have been accused of copyright infringement.

Of course, you want it to spread as far as possible so many people would learn about it and you also want them to recognize you as the composer. You don't want other people to claim your music as theirs. A licensing contract with others would let them play your song legally. You and the other parties would spell out the terms and conditions of the deal beforehand.

Record labels and artists don't leave it to chance when there's a copyright violation. With millions of dollars on the line, they know they need the finest attorneys specializing in licensing concerns to help them. They could either lose money or tarnish their name. Worse still, they could lose both.

To those unfamiliar with music licensing business, the entire process is somewhat very technical. A lot of indie artists and consumers don't know much about copyrights and permits. Solicitors help simplify the legal process to their clients when the entire process becomes too complex. They counsel them on what is considered permissible and what is not.

If a musician wishes to cover a popular music originally recorded decades past, he or she would have to acquire a license to record it. With a counsel acting as a guide, the musician would ask for specific licenses to use, like the right to play the track on a TV program or use a stanza of the lyrics to incorporate in a new track. The whole process includes many legal issues so it would be smart to hire solicitors for this kind of game.




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