Cover Songs, Licensing Fees, and Time Well Spent

Bill and I LITERALLY had a fireside chat this Sunday where we discussed a number of "to do" items for our upcoming album. A large part of the conversation was dedicated to how we were going to handle the inclusion of "Don't Go Back To Rockville", a song that was not written by us. Because the recording turned out so good, and because we are both such big fans of the song, we agreed that we want it included on the album.

We then strategized about how to do that. Do we just include it, keep our fingers crossed, and hope that R.E.M. doesn't catch wind of the fact that we're using their material? Since we have a history of teetering on the edge of being sued into oblvion, that seemed like a bad approach. So we conspired to actually figure out how to arrange for royalties to be paid and all that.

We actioned the item to Bill, but since I had a few minutes at work to goof around on the extra-webs, I dug up this little gem:

http://www.cleverjoe.com/articles/music_copyright_law.html

Now, while I'm not convinced that the service the author recommends in the beginning of the post is the BEST Place to go, he does go on to discuss how you can contact the record companies directly and set it all up.

The punchline is this: 85 bucks for the song. Maybe a few bucks more since the song comes in at SLIGHTLY over five minutes. So let's say 100 bucks for 1,000 albums sold. TOTALLY doable.

So that's the good news. There is no bad news. You can go about your business.