Legality of Posting Sound Clips on Websites
Reynaldo
6,054 Posts
Is there a minimum amount of a song that it's more or less OK to post online? I want to do a minute from each song on an album, all stitched together into one file. I know online retailers do the sound clip thing sometimes but I'm guessing they have agreements or whatever.
Comments
Yup.
Just go ahead and post those 320kbps full length rips already
oh dear god Reynaldo is going to go all Girl Talk on us.
for example-all music guide, a very high profile site, provides millions of 30 second clips from songs but it is doubtful that they are paying royalties or have obtained permission (that is a guess, given the sheer number of clips on offer). as far as i am aware, they have never been targeted.
unlike amg though it sounds like your site is not commercially oriented, so maybe that adds a further level of insulation.
you should most definitely have a disclaimer drafted and placed on your site. this last piece of advice i am 100% sure on.
Wikipedia usually has these types of things nailed down. (abridged)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Music_samples
And fair use:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fair_use
I know they are not the definition of what's legal but it doesn't seem that they have had much in the way of issues with copyrights.
I like finding tracks on youtube, even if its just a slide show with the song playing
You'd be surprised. It's not usually sites that are licenced but the content providers who supply the clips to the sites themselves.
I'd imagine Allmusic is powered by someone like Muze, probably one of the biggest music 'clip' providers out there.
http://www.muze.com/index.htm
They provide the likes of Amazon with their clips.
Not even remotely au fait with the concept of 'fair use' in the US so wouldn't want to give an uninformed opinion, but if you are using others IP however long or short, I would imagine you should pay, how likely you are to get lent on by the copyright owners is the question and I would imagine very little, so wouldn't worry too much
Dude, it's 2009. You can get a webhost with unlimited bandwidth for like $7 a month. This should not hold you back. One advertisement on the top of your site should pay for this fee.
Gotcha. This sounds like a cool project. Good luck.