Advice: obtaining rights to a song for use in video and live

Hi, there is an very old song I am interested in obtaining the rights to, to use in videos on line, tv mainly and in campaigns. There would be a unique version based on the original soundtrack, maybe reperformed on certain subtacks or entirely. What is the way you do this (get rights)?

There is also a more modern song too, less than 20 years old, which uses some sections of of an old song, I wish to get hold of, mainly for limited use on screen in original form modified. It's more high profile.

Thanks.

https://musicservices.org/license/faq/faq_26

Thanks for that, Andy, it looks very useful. Does it's advice apply to Australia much?

But how does the process normally go? Because all I've heard in the past, is that these things are very tricky, and not standardised ways of doing things. How should I approach this, as one is an obscure hit from a top performing artist. The other is a theme song from an ancient hit English show (mostly forgotten) which would be very useful for political purposes, to reuse each time as a sort of theme. The contexts are very extreme here, as far as negotiating for, and I don't want to tip my hand as to my interest or use by make online approaches.

I can't help for your country, but I will say that this whole industry needs an overhaul. It needs to be simple to license what you want, and then maybe (just maybe) the artists will see more money in their pockets. The music licensing seems to be the most confusing thing possible, and they seem to try to keep it that way.

Even to get music on our radio station was a bunch of hoops to jump through. That said, when I reached out to the different companies and explained what I was trying to do, most of them were very easy to work with while they checked on licenses and stuff, but this was mostly back in the early days of streaming radio when everyone was eager to have people actually do things the right way, and get a little money coming back in for the artists.

On that really old song, it might have fallen into public domain, I'd have a lawyer check that one and see if you can use it without royalties. The newer song you can try to contact the recording company and see if they can point you in the correct direction to license the words and notes, or the actual performance and recording. Note that in the USA, those are two (or three) distinct different licenses depending on which companies they are working with.

A quick google brought me to this company http://apraamcos.com.au/music-customers/licence-types/ Might be a good place to start. And this site seems to cover public performance, but again might be a good place to contact because they might be willing to point you to another place https://ablis.business.gov.au/service/a ... icence/338

Eventually you'll need a lawyer for some of this, some of the synchronization contracts can be tricky and I'd want to pay a specialist to look things over before committing. Synchronizing music ad images often has very specific use cases that need to be clearly defined.

Thanks for that. By very old I mean, 60s/70's. With the Disney copyright act, are they up from 75 years to 100-15/ years now?

If only, it was public domain, I could make a killing. But with rights I can stop other people using it to cut across the message.