SwingDJs

Has anyone here experience in making and selling your own compilations? What I'd like to do is make a CD for fund-raising purposes for CCSWING. Any help?

Hope you got your licenses covered. Nothing like ASCAP coming after you.

Kalman

I think Riley from Chi. has done this in the past but I was just wondering if anybody else has any experience with the legalities and what kind of hoops that you have to jump through.

You might try here: http://www.swingdjs.com/phpbb2/viewtopi ... ight=ascap

Cain't rightly says myself but I would think that if you plan to sell someone's intellectual property, you're asking for trouble.

Especially after you advertise it on an open discussion board.

Kalman

This is my favorite compilation:



Kalman

mousethief wrote:
Cain't rightly says myself but I would think that if you plan to sell someone's intellectual property, you're asking for trouble.

Especially after you advertise it on an open discussion board.

Kalman

I'm looking for advise from someone who has done it legally. And I'm only advertising for information.

I thought that you could buy right to a specific number of songs off of a website,.

Markus was telling me about doing it. He wanted a song for his videos, and was breaking down the cost of some of the songs.

Like, a bill haley song is as follows. You pay, say $1, for every time you use the song (i.e. burn a disc) however, with that song, there is a minimum 10,000 uses per order, and and you have to pay for all 10,000 up front. that means $10k right up front to use one song! that is a whole helluva lot of money


I thought BMG did it, i could be wrong (not BMG the music club, BMG the megalithic music company thingy)

I'm in the process of making a compilation right now. It's mastered and the cover design is on the way. Release due late in may.
As soon as I got the last bits finished I'll post more info on this board.
But since this compilation is all with bands that play today is a bit different than using classics. I've made contracts with all bands or recording owners.
I guess the easiest way if you want classic swing is to get in touch with a record label that has lots of music you want to include and negotiate with them to make a compilation only using music from one or two labels. Or you can just import my compilation and sell it

My understanding is you need to get rights from both the owner of the song and the owner of the specific version. For example, if I wanted to include Ella's version of Honeysuckle Rose from Juan-Les-Pins, I'd have to get rights from Verve to use that version of the song and rights from who ever owns the intellectual property of Fats Waller's songbook (I think that's where ASCAP / BMI comes in).

Also, regarding the record companies, just as Kyle said, if you make it appear like it's a small project you're doing, they're not gonna wanna deal with you, and if you make it appear to be a big thing, then they're gonna want way too much money.

In Westie land, Dan Mez (who runs Fri's Swing City lindy dance in Boston) did an amazing job finding great - relatively unknown - westie songs from small, independent labels who were willing to let him use their songs at reasonable prices. That resulted in all those 5 volumes of "Swinging the Blues" cds and others that every westie from 4 years ago owns (In fact, ha ha, my understanding is it's Dan Mez who kinda discovered Eva Cassidy and put her Wade in the Water on the "Sophisticated Swing" cd, which is what started it's popularity in the dance world.)

its been done in the shag world a bunch. butch metcalf should be able to give you some insight on getting licences... shagtowndj@northstate.net