As someone who was a professional musician for several decades, from my experience, anyone seeking to record and release a cover of someone else’s song needs to specifically seek permission in writing from the artist, either through their label or legal rep. If they’re seeking to monetize that cover then contracts and/or agreements need to be signed. Just dropping a cover without going through those steps invites serious legal trouble.
Artists and labels retain the right to deny permission to anyone seeking to do a cover of any song still protected under copyright law. I recall a specific incident years ago between Weird Al and Coolio about this. (Although Weird Al does parodies and not straight covers, same laws apply.)
Edit: Amending my comment to add that as I’m talking to folks here, I’m getting a better understanding of how copyright law works with covers vs. parodies, and my original comment above isn’t accurate.
Although Weird Al does parodies and not straight covers, same laws apply.
My understanding has always been that satire is fair use but because there could be some grey area there, and because weird al is a decent guy, he always sought permission. I seem to recall the coolio incident being a misunderstanding.
Correct. It was a misunderstanding. From what I remember someone from Al’s label said he had the go ahead from Coolio to do the parody. Only after it was released did Coolio make public statements about it, and Al tried to apologize but I don’t think Coolio was having it.
I don’t know how copyright law applies to satire but in my head, a parody of a song uses enough of the original material that you’d still need permission.
Not necessarily. Parody allows for a “percentage changed vs original work” when deciding whether copyright was infringed. Al was always perfectly within his rights to do the parody, but he’s a stand up guy and tries never to do a song that the original artist didn’t approve.
As someone who was a professional musician for several decades, from my experience, anyone seeking to record and release a cover of someone else’s song needs to specifically seek permission in writing from the artist, either through their label or legal rep. If they’re seeking to monetize that cover then contracts and/or agreements need to be signed. Just dropping a cover without going through those steps invites serious legal trouble.
Artists and labels retain the right to deny permission to anyone seeking to do a cover of any song still protected under copyright law. I recall a specific incident years ago between Weird Al and Coolio about this. (Although Weird Al does parodies and not straight covers, same laws apply.)
Edit: Amending my comment to add that as I’m talking to folks here, I’m getting a better understanding of how copyright law works with covers vs. parodies, and my original comment above isn’t accurate.
My understanding has always been that satire is fair use but because there could be some grey area there, and because weird al is a decent guy, he always sought permission. I seem to recall the coolio incident being a misunderstanding.
Correct. It was a misunderstanding. From what I remember someone from Al’s label said he had the go ahead from Coolio to do the parody. Only after it was released did Coolio make public statements about it, and Al tried to apologize but I don’t think Coolio was having it.
I don’t know how copyright law applies to satire but in my head, a parody of a song uses enough of the original material that you’d still need permission.
So he had to pay royalties to Stevie Wonder?
Not necessarily. Parody allows for a “percentage changed vs original work” when deciding whether copyright was infringed. Al was always perfectly within his rights to do the parody, but he’s a stand up guy and tries never to do a song that the original artist didn’t approve.
Weird Al also wanted to riff on some Prince songs but he wouldn’t allow it.