ScamAlert™!!!
MusicBizAdvice.com wants you and your money to be safe while you pursue your music
industry career! Following are some of the scams that are making the rounds of the music
industry...
SCAM: Beware of this clause!
When participating in songwriting contests or posting to creative and
networking websites, always check the site's Terms of Use for a clause like this:
"By providing any content to this
web site:
(a) you agree to grant the site editor a
worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive right and license (including any moral
rights or other necessary rights.) to use, display, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish,
distribute, perform, promote, archive, translate, and to create derivative works and
compilations, in whole or in part. Such license will apply with respect to any form,
media, technology already known or developed subsequently..."
This clause grants the website publisher
the right to change, use, publish or perform your material as their own, without crediting
you or paying you. If you posted lyrics, for example, this clause would give the website
publisher the right to use your lyrics with their own music and record and publish the
song, without credit to you.
Clauses such as this are not illegal; in
fact, on most websites, including MusicBizAdvice.com, some form of it is necessary to expedite the process of printing
readers' questions and comments, and to protect the website publisher's own content. The
problem lies in how broad the clause is, and how the clause allows your material to be
used. (At MusicBizAdvice.com, we use a version of this clause to print
readers' Q&A Questions, and to print Feedback we've requested on specific
subjects--but permission to print is plainly indicated on the relevant
pages, in an easily readable font.)
We reiterate, never post
any of your songs, lyrics, poems, short stories, or other original creative works to any
website until after it's been registered with the US copyright office. You never know what
you'll want to use someday, and to find your potential hit in use commercially by someone
else can be heartbreaking.
More scams
Know of a music or entertainment industry scam? Tell us about it. Send the details to
talktombadc@aol.com with "SCAM ALERT" in the
subject line. Include the company's name, web address, and contact information, along with
a brief description of the scam. We'll post as many as possible to keep it from happening to someone else. All
submissions are confidential. |
