Legal Disc Jockey What?

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
1

Legal Disc Jockey What?

So I recently found out that everything I purchase from itunes is not legal for me to spin, which I find very stupid. I don’t do the torrent thing or copy music from others. I even saved my receipts in case of an issue with the law. Now I also hear from people and some internet sources that I need some type of license and need to pay a monthly fee to even play legal sources(beatport, DJCity, and what not). Can anybody confirm this? If true, what do I need to do to be a completely “legal DJ”?

I also found this.

Specific DMCA Requirements

The Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) governs certain requirements and rules with which persons transmitting digital media must comply. These are the requirements that you must follow in order to be DMCA compliant.

No requests can be played within 60 minutes of receiving the request.
No more than 1 song by any specific artist, album, or box set may be played for each 1 hour period of your show and no more than 2 songs may be played back to back in a 2hr show.
Music playlists for your show may not be posted anywhere prior to the airing of your show
No bootleg concert audio may be played during your show.
All music played must have proper ID3 tagging (artist, album, song title) and this information must be passed to the listeners with your streams.

This seems like it’s for radio DJs but WTF?

If I have a Small Business License and obtain music from legal sources, is this good enough?

2

where did you get that from? i dont see it on the wiki or the pdf file of the 1998 document…

3

I dabbled in this in one of my music classes at NCSU. If you’re playing out at a nightclub/venue, it is the job of the venue to have permits that allow you to play copyrighted music. So I think you’re all good, I believe.

4

Okay but DJing songs downloaded from itunes is not legal correct?

5

Dude don’t worry about it, seriously.

6

I know but this is the only thing I do for money nowadays, so I just wanna make sure I don’t get sued for fees that would take me a lifetime to repay.

7

Considering all major DJ software has itunes library integration I really doubt there is an issue.

Also, let’s say if you were playing all pirated music at a gig how would anyone even know?

Same thing for itunes music, there are no copyright police forces shaking down DJs and doing computer forensics to determine if music is pirated or in your case not purchased from itunes. At least not yet anyways.

8

You won’t get sued. It’s not like it used to be where they want to make an example out of some kids who downloaded a few songs from Napster. Pay for your music and you’re fine.

9

And pretty soon we’ll be spinning subscription cloud-based tunes and it will be all be a moot point.

10

Okay cool. Thanks for the replies. I’m calming down and a little less mad now.

11

BTW ..

Pretty sure that “Piece of Paper” refers to radio station plays, where they keep track of playlists for royalty purposes not nightclubs or live dj’s.

Although I seem to remember someone here needs to hand in a playlist every night due to the laws in that country (Europe somewhere).

I know back home there are agencies that collect money from venues based on the approx # of people that attend / sq ft etc for live acts/dj’s etc …

But Radio’s need to have playlists and pay based on them.

12

just to throw a spanner in the works its actually illegal to copy a cd to your computer. but you can copy a cd to a single cd for a personal backup.

you can also make an analog copy. So that means you could make a single copy of your timecode cd to vinyl or a cassette tape if you so please.

who is up for doing with cassettes

13

Inst that a grey area of British Law?

I seem to remember some bottom feeder company selling licenses for this, so you could copy 1000 copies of physical media onto digital and play that digital copy out live.

It doesnt apply to digital bought files, and you are allowed to back up physical media to digial lawfully, but not for public performance.

I remember walking past their booth last BPM. It was the only booth with no customers and a full bowl of sweets. lol.

14

If you look at any of your CDs or Records you will find a paragraph about copyrights that will include a sentence like “public performance is strictly prohibited”. You can also find this sentence or some variation of it in the terms & conditions of any download store, be it itunes, beatport or else, which is what freaked you out in the first place, I guess.

This is due to the fact that there are different scopes of copyright (e.g. duplication, public performance, etc.). When purchasing a track you do not aquire any of the rights mentioned above.

So in order to publicly perform a track the corresponding right has to be bought.

This is none of your business as a DJ but lies within the accountability of the venue/promoter.

This is btw. the reason why mix-hosting on mixcloud is legal whereas on soundcloud it is at least a grey area, as mixcloud actually pays royalties/fees to copyright organisations and soundcloud doesn’t.