School me on podcasts, internet radio, legality, etc.

Controller_7

Dearest friends of Soulstrut, I need your assistance. I'm hoping someone here can drop knowledge on how I might be able to proceed with a particular project.

I work in a library and I was recently given the job of selecting all of the music for 12 branches. Now that I've got a vested interest in the collection and how it is performing, I want to go the extra mile to promote it and library services in general. I got the idea of doing a podcast that highlights music from the library's collection, basically like a radio show where we only play music that is available for check out. Our collection is extremely diverse and there are thousands of titles, so I could put together a wide variety of shows/playlists. As far as i can tell, without a radio show, I really can't go about recording music with the intent of making it available as a podcast. Even a no-download Soundcloud file would be a no-no since it would violate terms of use. Since this is for the library, I've got to be 100% legit.

Any ideas of how I can do something like this and avoid potential troubles? Right now, the best I can think of is creating Spotify playlists and sharing them on our site and through the library's Facebook page. I'd kind of like the option of actually recording stuff so that I could feature interviews or maybe even a performance if possible.

I don't really have time to do a real radio show at a local college or anything like that. Can you jump on internet radio stations or anything like that?

Any info would be appreciated. I'm kind of excited about this because it could create a lot of enjoyment for me in my job and I'd like it to work out. Thanks in advance.

Mondeyano

In terms of podcasts, as you may know big podcasts like Adam Corolla are being sued by patent trolls. As a response, a lot of people in the podcast community are trying to back this piece of legislation.

http://www.eff.org/shield

If it's a small non-profit thing I don't think making a podcast would cause any trouble but since it's for a library I would avoid the medium altogether until the legal issues have been sorted. Not really helpful but just to let you know, podcasting might not be the way to go at this time, even if it provides the most freedom.

vintageinfants

talk to the governing board of directors about speaking to their lawyer about the matter and see if it's something he'd go to bat for, or if the library would take the risk. a quorum of 12 branches has to have SOME form of legal department.

Yemsky

I don't have an answer to your question but a question... As I don't need stand your intent: people would listen to a podcast or a stream on spotify, like what they heard and then go to the library to borrow the CD or Vinyl?

Controller_7

Yeah, basically I'd be making mixes to help people discover things they might like. They'd have the option of getting the whole album from the library. People are unaware of the wealth of things we have to offer, so it'd just be a promo type thing.

SPlDEY

Hey Tommy,

This might help:
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Podcasting_Legal_Guide#Licenses_You_Will_Need.

saludo,

- Diego

Okem

I don't know about the legality of it, but if you look at something like mixcloud, where you have endless amounts of mixed format & podcast like shows available for streaming, many of them are shared by reputable companies, who I seriously doubt are licensing each track played. You would understand a online music magazine having some kind of fair use deal with record companies, because they're basically a promotional tool. But plenty of the other companies won't have, I can't imagine the smaller blogs or fashion stores that sharing music online as a form of promotion for themselves are doing it completely legally.

You could just be kinda cheeky about it and try and find a clever way to put enough distance between the organisation you work for and the music being shared, whilst still making the promotional link clear. In all likelihood, as you're not making anything available for download, the worst that would happen is being sent an email saying that the filehost, soundcloud or whoever, have received a legal request from the copywrite owner for their music to be removed, and the file being removed.

But that may not be a risk your employees are willing to take. There must be some kind of legal agreement in place between the library and music companies that allows them to lend music. It may already have some mention what that music is allowed to be used for, that may prohibit what you want to do.

An alternative could be to copy what those reputable people over at Ameoba do, and make a promotional video of some musician's selection of CDs pulled from the racks. Maybe you have some connections, or you'll find some local or older musicians willing to do some free promotion for the library. I dunno. Just a thought.

Controller_7

Thanks for the input everyone.

There's no agreement between libraries and music companies. I believe it all just boils down to ownership of a physical item.

I think I'm just going to have to do spotify for now. Don't want to get fired over something like this.