Quote:

Mike, I've been in the music publishing business for 15 years in a rather significant way (we own a share of the current Tim McGraw #5 song and have had quite a few #1's on the country charts including Song of the Year with George Strait.

Your comment was partially correct but not entirely.

1. It is virtually impossible to copyright a series of chord changes. There would have to be something UTTERLY DISTINCTIVE about them and that is almost never true. There are literally thousands of blues and jazz tunes that have EXACTLY the same changes and they are not copyright violations.

2. You are correct that you cannot PERFORM a copyrighted work without a license because performance is one of the "exclusive rights" granted to authors/publishers under the Copyright Act. But the TRUTH is that performances of copyrighted works are virtually never enforced AGAINST THE PERFORMER. Performances ARE enforced against the VENUES...bars, night clubs etc. that are often attacked by BMI or ASCAP and required to obtain BLANKET licenses that allow them to perform any and all copyrighted works in their catalogs. But I've never heard of a BAND getting busted for performing a song in public venue for pay or otherwise.

3. So, you can create an arrangement of the CHORD CHANGES in BIAB to virtually any song without running afoul of the Copyright Act...as long as you don't include a MELODY track.

But the poster who stated that removing vocals from records and using them IS a copyright violation. In fact, it is TWO violations. One, the song itself is being infringed upon...assuming the original melody and/or lyrics are used and two, there is a SEPARATE copyright vested with the RECORD LABEL for THEIR particular version of the song.

Best,
Jim


This is pretty much what I thought however getting an explanation from some one closer to the issue was nice. Thanks.

John
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