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Comment by hack_edu | Hacker News Reader

Rights-clearing in electronic music and hip hop is usually quite complicated. Taking a beat or riff from a song is fair game, as it could not in any way be claimed to serve as a replacement for the original work. Often though, big named folks like Kanye West or Daft Punk will clear their samples before releasing, just in case.

I believe the payment is a flat rate, through rights clearing houses and the artists' agents.

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Do you have any more info on this perhaps? I know when I'm working on a TV show or basically anything that will get screen time I have to work out through sheets of paperwork where I list every single sound item in the video, including main background track(s), background noise tracks (imagine a distant bg music from a radio down the street) etc. I have to list Name of the track, artist that played it (since it doesn't have to be an original author - I guess they somehow settle that on tier 2 then), basically any music that is longer than 8 beats - but common dogma is to include those also, just in case. It's very tedious process and I hate it, since when I shoot some scene where I don't have a total control over environment I basically have to know which song is playing by whom from a few seconds byte. Sometimes I just don't use great footage because I couldn't identify the song playing in the bg.

As I understand (I have to check it) those sheets are then handled by legal dpt. in production company that sends that sheet to the authors union of sorts in whichever country this show is played in and they send the bill either to the TV house or production house, or sometimes both based on total songs played in that month or something like that. It's hell. It gets even more complicated when the product is to be standalone (as in a movie or show that gets sold around).

I also vaguely remember legal dpt. used/uses some sort of online database with all possible songs/authors from various distributors where they can pay and clear rights via them. I'm not sure if this still exists, if not - there's a great startup idea nudgenudge* for someone here.

That sounds like a system in SERIOUS need of hacking to improve usability.

You are correct. Moreover, from talking to people who work therein, I get the impression that broadcast production is full of such systems, with overengineered unhelpful software if any.

I dunno about fair game, The Verve would probably disagree: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_Sweet_Symphony

Basically, they sampled the "orchestral riff" from Rolling Stones, and in the end got sued and were forced to pay all royalties for this song to the Rolling Stones, even though the lyrics and music was new.

The flat rate is pretty high though, and discourages innovation.

We are also trying to figure out licensing for this genre for Mugasha (http://mugasha.com). It has been a big PITA so far.

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