JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Mentor Questions Forum Mechanical Licensing from Harry Fox Agency

Hi! I'm new here. I'm going to cover some previously recorded songs on my new CD. I know I have to get the mechanical license from the Harry Fox Agency, but when trying to "check out" of the
license area, I get questions (fill-ins) wanting to know the length of my cover, the CD name (not named yet), UPC Code, and things I don't hae yet, since i haven't done the song.
Do I wait to pay the mechanical license AFTER I do the cover??
Seems backwards, because I'd hate to do a song, then can't cover it because it's not available.
HELP!!!

Hey finga,

They need to know what product it's going to be in. It's like getting the license to run someone's photograph, they need to know what magazine, what page and etc.

As you are putting your project together, you can gather that info and then get it out before you get the copies made. If it's on Harry Fox, it's available. You can find songs from the Harry Fox songfile public search, just go here:

http://www.harryfox.com/public/songfile.jsp

And click on the public search. Then you can do a search for the songs. If the song you want is on there, then it's available.

Hope that helps, good luck, nice my space site, by the way.

Mike

I think this is a great question and I actually haven't had to submit anything like this to Harry Fox. So what happens in the case where someone doesn't know what the title of the album is going to be? Can they write TBD? Or file an amendment at a later date?

Thanks!

- Ana Maria Schwartz
Attorney at Law

www.amschwartzlaw.com

Hey Ana Maria,

Well, HFA uses the album name and USB (if there is one) to help track the release. In my photo analogy, if you wanted to use a famous photographers image in a magazine, you couldn't say, "First give me permission, then I'll tell you which magazine later."

You first see if the song is available, if it's on HFA, it's available, if not you need to look elsewhere. Then you determine the name of the album, if it will have a bar code or not, and the length of the song's recording. Then, before having your product made up, you pay for the HFA license.

Here's how I would do it. First I would find out who owns the copyright. If you can license all of them thru Harry Fox so much the better. If not find out who you need to obtain the license from.

If you license the songs thru Harry Fox I believe you will have to pay the current Statutory Rate.

After determining who you have to notify for each song get your product finished and ready to go. After you are satisfied that you are going to release your selected cover songs notify each copyright owner or Harry Fox if they have the songs of your intention to release those songs.

The copyright owner will need to know a few things such as the Artist, the Record Label, Name of the song, length of the song, number of copies you will produce, etc. They may ask to hear your rendition of the song.

After a song is recorded and released anyone may cover the song by paying the mechanical license fee.

If the copyright holder, usually a publisher, won't issue you a license you can obtain a compulsory license thru the U.S. Copyright Office.

Thanks for the great information!


- Ana Maria Schwartz
Attorney at Law

www.amschwartzlaw.com

I register my songs with CMRRA in Canada,are they automatically available through Harry Fox if someone was searching?

Thank you guys SO much!!! I'm lovin' this place!!!

There are other licensing agents besides HFA..

Many indie administrators provide their own version of a Mech license.

Dude...

http://songconsultant.com