JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Mentor Questions Forum u.s. songwriter - canadian artist

Hi,

Normally I would search thru the listings for answers to my own questions but this one has me stumped. I have some songs for a canadian artist who is a Johnny Cash look-alike whose popularity is growing in Canada. He may have a chance at the Legends Tour in the U.S. He asked me to write a theme song called "reflections in black" (I love it when they give you a title) O.K. mission accomplished. He liked the song so much he wants me to write an album's worth of songs written in the Johnny Cash style. Real hard to do without infringing on Cash's rights. To the point; He will record these songs in Canada. Basically, we are friends and he wants to make sure I get all the legal stuff like publishing, etc. taken care of so I get my share of his success if that should happen. (and it looks like it may happen.) We need a direction here! My attempts at contacting publishers are ignored of course. The songs are copyrighted and I'm doing them one at a time as I write them. (I know about collections etc. at the copyright office but I've decided to do it this more expensive way.) I am a BMI affiliated writer.
Question: What am I getting myself involved in? How should I handle my part of this deal? Are there international copyright things we need to do? (Who can afford an entertainment attorney? not me.) Can this just be an agreement between 2 friends and see what happens? Although this artist is amazing. The chances of the 2 of us setting the music world on fire. We opened for Carlene Carter at the National Traditional Country music fest in Missouri Valley, Iowa and even she was set back by just seeing and meeting this guy.

I respect the opinions of the mentors on this site. (I've even used some of Mike Dunbar's quotes from time to time )

Help?

Wayne Longtin Sr. www.waynelongtin.com

Call your PRO for help. If you don't have one yet, you'll need one when this gets going. I'm with ASCAP, and I'm not sure about this, but I believe that SESAC works especially well with Canada (maybe Jody can give us more info on this?) Your PRO will give you free advice on the procedures.

Folks do this all the time, so it's not impossible and shouldn't be much harder than doing your income tax or writing a computer program to map the human genome.

All the Best,
Mike

Thanks Mike,

I appreciate your quick reply. Calling an actual person never occured to me. But that's what my PRO is there for I guess. I just feel like a small fish and haven't wanted to bother someone with my questions. Most of my answers are supplied right here. I will take your advice though and call. Maybe somebody else has an idea. I want to be as informed as I can before I make the phone call.

Wayne

If you can't find a publisher to do the legal work you can always write up an agreement that satisfies you both.

It is my understanding that Canadian Law requires so much of the content of a release be be written by Canadians so you may not be able to write all the songs he uses. Not sure how that would work in this case tho.

I have one Johhny Cash type song if he is looking for the early type songs. I do my own licening if needed.

Good luck.

Hey Wayne,

Don't know if it's any help, but I'm a member of ASCAP, and I'm in Sydney Australia. I register my songs with ASCAP, and if they hapeen to get played here, the royalties ( as far as I'm aware ) go to their international office in Sweden and somehow get returned. In other words, all the PRO's send respective payments to their international affiliates and it somehow works itsef out in the mix. Not much legal help I know, but I'd bet if your songs were registered with BMI, then it would all work out fine whereever they may be played.

Don't know if you can register a non US registered publisher ( i.e. not either BMI or ASCAP ) as the publishing interest though.

Sidenote - Ray, the bit about requirung Canadian content seems a bit weird. Where did that come from ?

cheers, niteshift

Thanks Ray,

A written agreement may be all we need at this point. Does something like that need to be notarized or offically stamped or something? I can pursue that myself of course.

Thanks everybody, you're my heroes!

Wayne

I don't see why you don't just give him a mechanical licence for the songs he wants to cut. He pays you the CA mechanical rate (or you agree to something else) for the use of your work, and your PRO collects the performance royalties for radio play and concerts (it doesn't matter which PRO you belong to, they all have reciprocal agreements with international bodies). The one question might be who gets the publishing - likely he / his label will want all or part of it.

"Many people confuse a mechanical license with a "compulsory" license. A mechanical license, is a "negotiated license" between the publisher of a song and the record company for the first time use or release of the composition. Mechanical licenses are completely negotiable. The owner of a composition may indeed refuse to allow a composition to be recorded at all. However this is only applicable on the first recording."
Source - http://www.thefirm.com/articles/MechanicalRoyaltiesToday.html

The agency in Canada that deals with this is - CMRRA
info - http://www.indievoice.com/content/features/bandaid/july2000.htm
website - http://www.cmrra.ca/default.htm

(Harry Fox only deals with mechanical licencing for the US.)

From what I've read, as stated in the first article, you can negotiate your mechanical licencing fee as anything you like or think is fair (up to the standard rate per # of copies manufactured). You register the songs with your PRO and get the performance royalties. You need to decide who gets what of the publishing before you make that registration. You copyright the songs as "unpublished", you are the author of words and music. He can register copyright for his master recording (not the underlying work).

Hopefully, Stu is around and will see this and post his advice.

cheers
Hummin'bird

Thank You Vikki!

Haven't talked with you in a while although I read your stuff regular. I thought of you immediately after I made this post because the artist I'm talking about lives near you. I have a base of information to work from now anyway. My question to you is should we be treating this project as if we're about to become world famous? A good ol' boy contract is what we're talking about now. But friends are friends and business is business.
That's why my friend is concerned about doing this right. Maybe he has higher expectations than I do so I need to rise to his level. He is an amazing talent who currently drives truck over the road. At this time he has no label and I have no publisher so it's like the blind leading the blind.

This might make a good subject. When do you finally take yourself serious enough to pursue all these steps? I've been around long enough to know the chances of ever getting to the level of success we all dream about. But still I know all these steps have to be taken. I have my 3rd CD coming out of original material but other than registering my songs with BMI and getting the copyrights done, they are released on my label, which is "Never Too Late Records." Cute but if I ever hit the big one so to speak I'll be in trouble? Maybe this is a subject all independent artists should consider. I mean those of us who are truly independent and out here doing our thing. Writing songs, producing CD's, building a fan base and touring to sell those CD's without the benefits of record labels and publishers which basically ignore us anyway. Do we really need to do all this legal stuff?

Thanks for your advice Vikki. I'll be pursuing it and see what happens.

Wayne

Thanks niteshift for your input. It's reassuring to know that if you follow the proper procedure the powers that be will do their thing and we'll come out with a happy ending. This type of thing could lead a songwriter to go fishin' and forget the whole thing!

The PRO in Canada is SOCAN. The Canadian content is for getting airplay credits.The Canadian radio stations are required to play 35% Canadian content in their playlist.It has a logo called MAPL M=Music A=artist P=Production and L=Lyrics,if 50% or two out of the four are Canadaian,it counts as Canadian content to be credited toward the 35% content they are required to play. If the artist is Canadian and he records it in Canada,it counts as Canadian content,even if written by an American or others.If the writer of lyrics and music is Canadian,but the artist is American and he records in the US,it still counts as Canadian for airplay credit.Man did I write that,can you understand what I just wrote.LOL

I think Stu would say get all your "i's" dotted and "t's" crossed now. It doesn't have to be difficult, but get it in writing. You can actually give him permission to record the songs gratis if you like, and just get your performance royalties & the credit. But get it in writing, because if, 10 years from now, he's a big name and they're releasing or redoing that first album with your songs on it... you'll wish you'd protected yourself.

For some reason that made sense to me Everett! Thanks for the input.

Wayne

Hey Everett, thanks for th info. We have a similar thing here in television, but not sure about radio. I think it's all gone crazy these days. We have the internet and all corrospond and write songs with each other regardless of country of origion, so sounds like the legislators are a little behind the real world. It's all about the music man !

Like Wayne said, I'm giving up and going fishing LOL

cheers, niteshift

The MAPL thing was brought in a number of years ago because radio in Canada would not play music from Canadian artist,thinking that all good music had to come from away,the US mainly.Well government knew that there would never be a Canadian music industry,regardless of how much talent was here,if radio was not forced to let that talent have a place to display their talent.Radio fought it all the way,saying government had no business telling them how to run their business.Well government was the ones,through the CRTC,that issued licenses to these radio stations to use the airwaves to run their business,so they made it necessary for radio to play a percentage of Canadian music in order to keep their licenses.Radio,being smart asses,complied by playing all the Canadian artist in the wee hours of the morning,thus complying with the law but not fulfilling the intent of the law.Government then had to bring in another law requiring them to play a percentage of Canadian artist per hour.Radio,not to be outdone, will only play the big name Canadian artist,(that have made it world wide),over and over in prime time.The CRTC is now pondering how to over come this problem. The Canadian music business has contributated many great artist to the world over the past thirty years,I wonder how many would ever have made it if Canadian radio had of had their way.

PS When I say Canadian radio,I am referring mainly to large companies,maybe owned by outside interest.Many smaller privately owned radio stations did support local talent without being forced to do so.

That's really interesting. Something we in the U.S. should know. I had a DJ in Vancouver, BC. that requested my CD. Wonder if he ever played it? Once again the corporate beings and the Government beings have managed to mess up the music industry. I personally know a number of very talented people from Canada. What can we as artists do about it though?

Wayne

Hey Everett and Wayne,

I really don't know what the answer is.

Essentially the legislation is to counter big business monopolising the airwaves with their repetitive , boring dribble and to provide an interesting spectrum of art.

Problem is, when they are only doing it as a statuatory duty, the general public ( who are not artists ) just get fed the lowest common denominator in manufactured rubbish. Sort of like living on Big Mac's.

There is too much money, and too much inluence involved.

I only listen to commercial radio to keep up on the play. It's sort of like watching "Days of Our Lives ", it doesn't change, and provides fodder to the mases.

Long live the indies and the interesting and progressive music they add to the monocoloured spectrum of commercial interests.

cheers, niteshift

The airwaves belong to the public,but big radio stations seem to think that they own it and to hell with the public.Radio will play what they want and get paid for(payolla).They are selling advertising but if the public don't listen to their station to hear the music and advertising,advertisers will soon realize they are wasting their money,then radio will depend entirely on revenue from the big record labels.People often vote with their feet,in this case we can vote with our ears.