Streaming MP3s on blog?
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- mg33
Got a question for you guys. Various blogs stream music in individual posts. They aren't downloadable songs but they're just in a flash based streaming player. See this post on my blog:
http://www.randomtransmission.co…Are there any legal concerns with streaming a song like this? Do people typically request approval to do this, or is it considered OK because they're not making the song available for free via download? The iso50 blog is a perfectly good example because 50% of that blog consists of music posts with a few songs per post.
Anyone else doing this? Anything I'm not considering?
- TheBlueOne0
Are there any legal concerns with streaming a song like this?
Yes.
Do people typically request approval to do this, or is it considered OK because they're not making the song available for free via download?
Depends.
The iso50 blog is a perfectly good example because 50% of that blog consists of music posts with a few songs per post.
Anyone else doing this?Yes.
Anything I'm not considering?
Probably.
- ********0
It's definitely not legal in the strict sense of the law. Streaming music requires that you obtain a license, and then pay royalties to the various royalty collection organizations. Technically, this is supposed to happen anytime music is played in public (crazy huh?). Radio stations and nightclubs are also supposed to keep a log of the music they play and then at the end of the year pay royalties on them.
In a practical sense, I would not really worry about it. There is simply so much copyrighted material on the web, that taking down your blog is going to rank extremely low on anyone's priority list.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the way the DMCA works is that copyright holders can't sue you directly, they must submit a request to the site owner asking them to take down copyrighted material. This is called "safe harbor" provision and has been affirmed in court. So in practical terms, it's likely the worst you will get is a request to take the music down.
- typical0
i just added some music to my site.. now im worried and thinking i should take it down.. i do have friends who make beats, i should talk to them and have them make me a custom to place on my site..
i am happy this thread popped up because i been wondering about the legality of it, i just have the music player playing the track just for music on the site.. no downloading.. but what is on the net is downloadable.. right?
- vaxorcist0
I worked freelance on a web radio station project a few years ago, we had to pay ascap/bmi/sesac licence fees, and we had to also agree to occasional audits of what was played.... some flash-based music players kept track of things in a format that made this easy, others didn't.... shoutcast/icecast streaming was different from play-on-demand too....
if you're really small-scale, you may not show up on anyone's radar, but if you do, be ready for lots of legal and record keeping req;s
- ********0
Trust me...ASCAP (such a fitting name) is not going to be knocking on your door for posting some tracks on your personal blog. They will hunt down and destroy the ISO50s of the world before you, and before that they will target blogs like Discobelle that offer hundreds of tracks in this fashion. They haven't even gotten that far.
- so if i wanted to just have some music playing on my site from tracks off my itunes, is that ok?typical
- ********0
One way to legally insulate yourself, though - find or post the track on YouTube, and then simply embed a YouTube player on your site instead of hosting the track yourself.
- mg330
Abettertomorrow,
I posted something today and just used a video from YouTube. Honestly I'd rather show an actual music video instead of an audio track, so that might be OK to post a video even if it's a single picture for the whole duration of the video.