On the eve of PodCampToronto, I recorded my very first podcast. Unfortunately these are completely unrelated events. The podcast is a 3 minute introduction to my Core Conversation at SxSW on Saturday, March 8, 2008 Startup or Sellout – Should I stay or should I go?
I was hoping to include Reel Big Fish’s Sell Out because I’m uncreative and didn’t want to record my own one man ska band cover of it. But I couldn’t figure out how to actually go about licensing the music. I figured I have the CD and an MP3 of the music but I was curious at what it would cost and how to go about purchasing a license to use it. Wikipedia provides an overview of music licensing and JD Lassica has information about licensing and podcasting including details some initial costs.
At a minimum, podcasters are charged $283 for the BMI license and $288 for the ASCAP license for 2005. While both the ASCAP and BMI contract are fundamentally similar, an important difference is the BMI agreement allows for pro rata fee computation but the ASCAP agreement does not. So a podcaster, regardless of the date in 2005 he executes the ASCAP agreement, will have pay $288, even though the license expires on Dec. 31, 2005. BMI, on the other hand, takes into account the month you obtain the license. So a podcaster with a license start date of Sept. 10, 2005 need only submit $94.32 for the remaining months of 2005.
Ahhh, we’ll it’s now 1998, but a minimum $288/year fee. Well definitely not worth it to me when if I’m lucky 100 people will listen to the podcast. Very minimal information is available at SonyBMG which as their Licensing Department but it doesn’t include any details for podcasts or online components. SonyBMG Canada has the Increase Volume site that includes an online submission where I get to request the fee. This is all new, I was hoping that there was an equivalent to iStockPhoto or Getty that included the pricing and distribution terms.
Rights management and licensing is hard. I guess I understand why Idee is able to sell services around Image Monitoring.