Permissions for Music

To make sure my film is going to be as professional as possible I needed to get permission to use the song/backing track for our opening sequence, if I don't do this it will limit the places which I can post my film, for example I wouldn't be able to show it on YouTube because they would just take it down. In a serious case I could even get sued by the owner of the rights to this song because I used it in my film without permission. To make sure this didn't happen I found out what record label owned the rights to this song, it turned out to be "679Artists", but "679Artists" are owned by "Warner Music Group".

Originally I just just emailed "Warner Music Group" because I thought that they would be more likely to reply because they are a bigger company but I have still yet to receive a reply from them. I know that the email had sent because the next web page said that it was successfully delivered.

When i hadn't received an email from "Warner Music Group" I decided to email "679Artists", but when I did some research on this record label I found out that there a few different parts to their company and they had lots of previous names for their company. I found two email addresses for this record label and emailed both of them and one of this got back to me.

Since "679Artists" have given me permission to use this chosen song it makes my film seem alot more professional and will be more appealing to film makers and people who are in the industry. This is a copy of the email which I sent to "Warner Music Group" and "679Artists".

Dear Sir/Madam,

We are creating an opening sequence to a British Crime Film for our coursework in media studies and Tavistock College.

We understand that you are the owner of the copyright in the musical composition “Ps and Qs” by Kano and we want to create the opening sequence of a film to this song.  We want to use the first 2 minutes of this song in the video.

We are on a limited budget so i was hoping that you would let us use this song on our video free of charge. The opening sequence that we create will only be seen by my teacher and the exam board, i will upload my video to a blogging sit called Blogspot which is password protecting so that only me, my teacher and the exam board will be able see it.

It would be much appreciated if you could send me a confirmation email saying that it is ok to use this song free of charge on our school coursework. You can reach me on this email address - lsamson-hill@tavistockcollege.devon.sch.uk. Thank you for your time,

Yours Truly

Luke Samson-Hill

I am really glad that I am able to use the song "Kano - Ps and Qs" because it fits our genre so well, it also fits the codes and conventions of our genre and would compliment our setting and story line perfectly.