I don't think your CD's would cut into to your ballroom dance jobs. If they wanted a
DJ, they would have already hired one.

I do what Ian does- just give them away. Some folks will give you good tip in exchange.

If you think you can sell lots of them, and you get professional cover art and such you may consider securing copyrights.

This has been my experience. You will sell quite a few at first, then things will slow down. If you do it legally, you won't make any money. I have them just because I get requests for them, but I wouldn't depend on them for any considerable income.

Joe

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Songman55
Joe Ayala

I don't think a sales permit or vendor's license would be needed. Technically, maybe yes, but, I mean really. A few CD's here and there?

I was refering to the copyright issue. Technically, I suppose it's needed. But, again, this would be a small time thing. A few CD's maybe per gig, and make an extra $10 to $20 per CD depending how involved it got.

I think that's probably the answer to that particular question. I hope, haha.

There are some good ideas here. I'll have to give some thought to all this.

Does anyone have any understanding what happens if someone got caught selling cd's of their recordings of non licensed music?

Other than the moral issues, what's the real downside of getting busted? Payment of the proper rights fees plus a penalty? Something beyond that?

I would think if you do get caught, you're pretty screwed. I'm not sure if its worth it. You never know who gets their hands on one of those cd's. Especially if you promote it via flyers or on a website? A competitor learns of it and decides he wants to put a kink in your work and reports you...who knows?

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Bill in Dayton

*In the US, you can secure a mechanical copyright for the entire CD compilation for just $40US.

That does not protect you from royalty fees for covers, it protects your own mechanical compilation rights from being copied against your will.
http://www.copyright.gov/

That's the US copyright website, things have never been easier -- and there is a great FAQ situation there now. Check it out.

As for the payment of royalties for covers on anything on your CD, check out the Harry Fox agency for licensing. You can set up a situation where you only pay small fees according to your CD sales. Of course, you must keep a record of all sales in order to do this. And you should keep records anyway.

**It is best to only use your own home burner (PC, Mac or whatnot) to burn your Master CD and then send that out to a replication facility for duplication. This guarantees that your CD sales will play on the vast majority of players out there. It can also look much more professional, you can even find duplication houses, that, for an extra fee will place your own barcode on the thing. Artwork, jewel case, Redbook spec burning, and now that this has literally become a mom and pop business, you can find duplicators on the web very easily. Typically a one-time setup fee, look for one that will let you make smaller orders after the setup, that works best for me.

My wife sets up the table and sells the CDs while I work. I have had someone come up and want to buy one of every CD on the table. With up to ten different CDs on the table, including the religious and the Christmas CDs, that can be a substantial amount added to the normal gigging fee.

Do everything above board and legal from the betginning and sleep the sleep of the righteous at night. It is not that hard to comply with the laws and regulations.

As for someone playing the CD instead of the live performance, I have yet to hear of such happening. If anything, I've been called to NEW gigs because someone lent someone else one of my self-produced CDs...


--Mac