Legal hold music?

[oscar01]

Currently I have hold music playing a tape with wrist slitting music and to top it off the tape deck is on the floor under a rack beanie'd in to an analog port which gets kicked all the time. I have a new G450 and created a new music source and have uploaded classical music and it works in my test environment. What I'm not sure is if it is legal to play. It will be played to callers on hold in an ACD.

I thought the rule was something like if the composer was dead for over 200 years you could play their music. But what if the NY symphony played that music that you downloaded? Don't they get royalties? Seems like when I go to "Royalty Free" music sites I have to pay them to be a member.

Is there music I can download for free that I can legally play for my hold music?

 

[1a22ip]

I bought my Royalty free music from Staples. The have a collection of CD's with different types of music. I then ripped them to a SD card for my On-Hold System. Works great.

1a2 to ip I seen it all

 

[fataldata]

Royalty free music

 

[lopes1211]

$10 a track seems pretty fair here.

http://www.royaltyfreemusic.com/

If your time is not worth $10, you may need a new job.

-CL

 

[Sympology]

Let me clarify the law (for most countries).
You have:
Mechanical Copyright
Writers copyright

Names will change, time scales will change but the general rules apply.

Writers: This is what it says. This will expire after X years. This is, in your example, when the composer has died or the song is old and copyright has run out. Think Beethoven's 5th.
Mechanical: This is the ACTUAL recording, so if a CD is made of Beethoven's 5th by an orchestra, this one applies.

Of course a modern song may have both applied.

Now say an artists records Beethoven's 5th and say you may use it for free, then you can. However say they record last weeks No1, they can release the Mechanical license, but they cannot release the writers copy right, unless of course they also own that.

To make it a little more murky 2 things to watch out for.

Royalty free: Check it is licensed for commercial use, some only allow it for personal use or have other restrictions that apply.
Mechanical: watch out for remastered / new format copies: These are NEW recordings, so for example, early Elvis records in many countries are now out of copyright, but you will need to copy the ORIGINAL recording. If you copy the remastered CD, this would have a NEW copyright on it as it's effectively a new mechanical recording.

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

http://alvechurchlounge.org.uk