Originally Posted by Mike Dunbar
If someone wants to enter a cover song in the "cover band" section at OurStage, how do they deal with the copyright of the song? Mike

Mike,
I would think it's similar to playing a cover song at any live venue. The venue (whether online or offline) takes care of the ASCAP/BMI performance license, so I bet OurStage has this cost included in their marketing budget to host virtually unlimited cover songs.

I've looked "high & low" and have not seen any special instructions about uploading cover songs. Besides, how could they take the time to check everyone's uploads and contest entries? It would be very time consuming not to mention the added liability for OurStage to host such songs if they didn't have everything cleared ahead of time with the big Performance Rights Organizations.

If OurStage doesn't have a blanket performance license secured yet with all the big PROs, you can bet they'll come a knocking at their door before too long. grin

Same goes for SoundClick. They also support a "Cover songs" category for all their genres. For example, Country has a Cover Songs channel:
http://www.soundclick.com/genres/charts.cfm?Genre=Country&SubgenreID=200
You'll notice that all of their Genres support "Cover Songs" as a sub-genre alternative.

Michael

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