Hey you guys,

I do mixes every once in awhile in my room with a cool little digital recording box I bought and my dirt-cheap CDJ turntables. I'm thinking about posting some setlists on my website but I'm not sure of the legalities involved in doing so. I know that posting an mp3 of a song would be copyright infringement, but would it also be illegal to post up one single mp3 of the entire mixed set? You know... just like how alot of other dj sites post weekly set mixes on their sites and stuff? Is that legal? Or are they just hoping not to be noticed? I'd really like to start doing something like that for myself but I don't want to step on any toes, know what I mean?

~Mike

Here is my little take on this, but remember I am not a lawyer so dont base you choice on my opinion.

If you follow the fair use agreement, making copyrighted works available to download in a mix would not constitute fair use. This is justified because you end up using a large portion of a track. BUT if you were to make the mix available to promote yourself and your DJ talent, and not or peoples listening pleasure,then you should be covered.

I, along with many other sites, do it, and have never had any problems, but if a prick were to get you, they could. The RIAA have sued people without computers, 10yr olds, elderly, and even dead folks.

As long as you post it up the set/mix for free then im sure any Artist would love free promo on your site visted by millions of Screaming fans.

But i would not post up the just one mp3 of a song unless they have given it out for free or you have permission.

I think the best way to stay out of trouble is to make sure that your actions don't make you profit or somehow interfere with the label's profit.

Yep it is illegal, but something that on the whole people will turn a blind eye to as it's quite widely accepted that it's a necessary part of a DJ promoting his/herself.

There was a big uproar about this a few years ago concerning a popular UK hard dance label trying to stop people making mixes pretty much just containing tracks from their label and handing them out to hundreds of people (as this ended up competing with their own commercially released compilations) - what they said they deemed acceptable at the time seems to have carried quite widely, which is that if the mix contains tracks from a variety of labels (so the impact on an individual label is minimised) and the number copies given out are kept to a minimum, i.e. just for promotional use - say no more than a hundred or so copies, you're fine.

And whatever you do, don't charge people for copies of it as that's just taking the piss.

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Stu Cox |

^ Was this Tidy Trax?

They went apeshit about people remixing thier tracks too because a lot fo the amature remixes were better than the commissioned mixes, lol. So in the end they signed the amature mixes and released them as a series called "Rinsed". Gotta love the lol.

i think it's also very important to make sure the tracklisting is posted close to your mp3....of course once someone downloads it and then posts/gives it somewhere else, the tracklisting doesnt follow - and for that reasion, you should at least put a link to the tracklist in the tag

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PATRICK KROFT
PatrickKroft.com ~ DI.fm Tribal House DJ ~ Last.fm Tribal House

quote:

Originally posted by ThatsMagic As long as you post it up the set/mix for free then im sure any Artist would love free promo on your site visted by millions of Screaming fans. But i would not post up the just one mp3 of a song unless they have given it out for free or you have permission.

+1. I think promotion is very important for artists because what they earn from selling tracks on beatport and such is a joke.

quote:

Originally posted by Lunar Phase 7 ^ Was this Tidy Trax? They went apeshit about people remixing thier tracks too because a lot fo the amature remixes were better than the commissioned mixes, lol. So in the end they signed the amature mixes and released them as a series called "Rinsed". Gotta love the lol.

It was. Basically all of the Tidy kids didn't listen to anything other than Tidy tunes, so when any of them put a mix together it was just a Tidy back catalogue - you can see why Tidy weren't too happy!

And yeah, same happened with remixes of their tunes, although most of the remixes weren't better, people just played them cos they could get them free and they were a bit different from playing the orig... so yeah, 'Rinsed' was born then they did the same again a little while later and called it 'Milked'.

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Stu Cox |