Copyright & Aaron Copeland's Fanfare For the Common Man

As @JBacal did the programming on that original VSL mockup, I would imagine he worked from an official score. Boosey & Hawkes own the copyright. I’m unclear what Summit Brass have to do with it. They may believe you’ve just reused one of their recordings if it’s close in sound - or rather an automated service matched your version with theirs. There are digital audio matching services that can search newly uploaded music for copyright infringement. I got a copyright strike on my Superman March mock-up I completed a couple of years ago. Mine was on YouTube. I didn’t have to remove it though, only any monetisation would go to the copyright holders rather than myself (which doesn’t bother me since my subscriber count is laughably puny!). Do Soundcloud have a way of appealing against the decision to remove it?

Yeah Ihave lodged a dispute with them over it. how do you find out the Copyright owners of a piece eg in this case Boosey & Hawkes?

rAC said:

Yeah Ihave lodged a dispute with them over it. how do you find out the Copyright owners of a piece eg in this case Boosey & Hawkes?

Click to expand...

@Zedcars Thanks for that - I suppose what I was really asking about was how to go from knowing a particular works creator to finding the permissions and rights of that particular work? Is there a good search term to use or a particular site/s to search?

rAC said:

@Zedcars Thanks for that - I suppose what I was really asking about was how to go from knowing a particular works creator to finding the permissions and rights of that particular work? Is there a good search term to use or a particular site/s to search?

Click to expand...

It really was as simple as Googling:

who owns the copyright for aaron copland's fanfare for the common man?

Second result produced the link above. I guess there may be an easier way —perhaps a website I’m unaware of that shows the copyright for any classical music work? Sorry that’s not a very good answer is it. Hopefully someone else with more knowledge will chime in to help you further.

Interestingly my google didn’t give me a result in the first two pages of it!

rAC said:

Interestingly my google didn’t give me a result in the first two pages of it!

Click to expand...

I guess Google may show different results depending on a whole range of factors; country where the query originated being the main one. I’m in the UK. I never sign in to my Google account either when I use it, and I have content blockers and tracking blockers turned on.

This may help with future searches…

Thank you for that.

A Quick Look at that site & seems to be the thing I was looking for.

I've heard that the Harry Fox Agency is a good possible source to turn to in these situations.

During the pandemic I posted a virtual concert video of our beginning orchestra students playing Twinkle Twinkle on YouTube, and it got copyright struck…so…

It’s most likely their AI fingerprinting matched the melody to a recording by that group somehow.

Yeah.

So far, there have been no correct answers to the OP.

To post an arrangement or recording of a copyrighted work in an area where the public has access, you need written permission from the publisher. Period. It’s pretty easy to find contact information in ASCAP/ACE or BMI Song Search. Most publishers will grant a license for a nominal fee; some will have a form you can fill out detailing requirements that, if followed, will allow you to post for no fee (they will try to monetize your post; you don’t get to).

Every publisher is different, it seems but the requirement to get permission is unchanged.

Boosey & Hawkes is terrible to deal with. They never give a simple fee schedule, instead asking questions after questions. When answered, they ask more, more, more.

Harry Fox Agency/SESAC cannot help you with this, neither can ASCAP or BMI except to show you contact info. They would like to but Congress has to pass laws that let them do it.

This is not the same as making and selling copies for which a statutory fee schedule applies—pay the Fox Agency and you are good.

Happens all the time that services use an algorithm to scour their content, and it matches you with a commercial performance. I've known several people post their own piano recordings, and be shut down because they had supposedly posted recordings by Brendel or Kempf. You'd think that matching two digital files, and telling that they're not identical, would be fairly easy.

Pingu said:

Happens all the time that services use an algorithm to scour their content, and it matches you with a commercial performance. I've known several people post their own piano recordings, and be shut down because they had supposedly posted recordings by Brendel or Kempf. You'd think that matching two digital files, and telling that they're not identical, would be fairly easy.

Click to expand...

The bots are better than you give them credit for but there's another kind and that's the trolls.

The trolls are largely Brazilian and Russian (incl. TuneCore) but not exclusively. They will claim similarity to works and arrangements that are preposterous. Post an arrangement of "Greensleeves" and you'll see what I mean. The trolls do not have any affiliation with the composers/publishers on whose behalf they are claiming—they're just scamming you but, if you don't fight them, the takedowns will happen.

Back to the OP. Looking in ASCAP/ACE or BMI Song Search, we find

FANFARE FOR THE COMMON MAN​

• ISWC: T0700540006
• Work ID: 360006977

• Total Current ASCAP Share: 100%
• Total Current BMI Share: 0%

Songview LogoSongview Logo

Writers​

Publishers​

Only the Contact Info is what's important here. There's a phone number and email. I recommend the phone. The resulting follow up, if successful, will be a license to post. Being Boosey and Hawkes, I wouldn't hold my breath.

Thanks to all - it seems I would be up for $AU 200-300 to post my version. So as a pensioner it ain’t going to happen.
My lesson is learned.

rAC said:

Thanks to all - it seems I would be up for $AU 200-300 to post my version. So as a pensioner it ain’t going to happen.
My lesson is learned.

Click to expand...

That’s too bad. Fortunately, for what you want to do, there are plenty of other composers who have been gone longer than 70 years whose works are now in the Public Domain.

The rules are a bit different for the USA where PD begins 95 years after first publication (the +70 year rule won’t catch up till 2048) and Australia where PD begins at 50 years—follow +70 anyway to prevent takedown in the rest of the world.

None of this will prevent the troll bots but they are easily fought. This is done in your response letter by knowing the year of first publication in the US and the year that the last surviving composer or author died. The trolls are after low hanging fruit. I’ve never had one pursue me afterward.

Sticking with examples published before 1900 would appear to be a safe bet but what if you did an example from The Firebird? Ok in Australia (Stravinsky died in 1971) and the USA (1st pub. 1910) but for most of the world, won’t be in the PD till 2041.

Another example: A client wanted to post his arrangement of a song cycle by R. Vaughn Williams. Boosey and Hawkes came after him and he couldn’t understand why—the poems were in the PD, the death of the composer and date of first publication were all clear… Well, not quite. The first publication only included nine of the ten songs; the tenth was released posthumously and it hasn’t been 95 years.

Treating this like it's a legally-based copyright infringement accusation is, with all due respect, barking up the wrong tree.

When Soundcloud, YouTube, Facebook, etc. issue a cooyright claim, warning, or what have you, it has nothing to do with actual rights ownership, but is simply based on automated technology, like ContentID, that's designed to spot audio-based matches in uploaded music.

These services have no insight into actual legal copyright ownership, and the claims they issue are not based on copyright law or any database of actual copyright registrations. It's simply an audio match, along with some rudimentary pattern matching. And it's often completely wrong.

A big part of the problem is that the online services label these as "copyright" claims, which sounds like it has legal weight, when in fact, it's nothing more than an audio fingerprint match, which in some cases might actually be copyright infringement, but not necessarily, since the tech is not based on any actual copyright registration information.

The system is not perfect, and false detections happen all the time. In most cases, the claims can be disputed, but the resolution of any dispute is not up to Soundcloud, YouTube, etc. It's merely passed on to the party that registered the claiming work with ContentID, or whatever tech issued the warning. And it's up to that registrant to respond to the dispute.

But none of this has anything to do with real world rights ownership. It only affects the visibilty and/or monetization of uploads on platforms like Soundcloud and YouTube. So even though Mr. X may be the legal copyright holder on a piece of music, it could be registered by Mr. Z with ContentID, and all future online claims by ContentID will be issued on behalf of Mr. Z, and Mr. Z will be the final arbiter of how those claims, and any disputes, are resolved. But this has no bearing on actual copyright ownership, infringement, and rights in the eyes of the law.

This arrangement continues to cause its share of problems online. Not only due to flaws in the detection tech, but by bad actors who lay (online) claim to content that is not rightfully theirs. To say that it's an imperfect system is an understatement, but until a more reliable and foolproof solution is unvieled, inappropriate and unscrupulous claims will continue to get made that impact the disposition of content on sites like Soundcloud and YouTube.

The moral of the story is to be cautious when posting your own original works on any online service.