TSC.NS.7 :: (Side) Adventures in Comic Making: Acquiring Lyric Use Permission and Licensing ::
Nervous System, where you can learn more about ThoughtScape Comics and Lifeformed.
Hello Nervous System folks,
As the rain descends on Portland, settling in for its 9-or-so-month residency, I’ve been at work on a not-the-standard-activities-of-comic-creation-for-me task that I thought might be of interest. BUT FIRST…
We’re at 186 followers on the ThoughtScape 2022 Kickstarter! If you have any Kickstarter backing friends you might be up for sharing the project with, I’d love to hit 200 followers this month. You can send them this link: https://bit.ly/TSC2022ComingSoon or even drop them this crazy-tall teaser poster image…
Alright, let’s get into the nitty-gritty…
(Side) Adventures in Comic Making: (Attempted) Acquiring Lyric Use Permission and Licensing, Part 1
Earlier this year, I wrote a story for ThoughtScape Comics revolving around a mix tape, and that story is now in production with artist Rob Gaughran at the helm. A peek at Rob’s great work…
The story is set in 1991, and the mix tape in question contains some great music from the 70s and 80s. To make things as difficult and possibly as expensive as possible for myself, I let the muse or whatever take over during the writing process and the lyrics on the songs themselves ended up playing a big role in the tale. So, in the hopes that I might be able to use actual excerpts from the lyrics, I have set out to try to get permission or acquire a license for the usages from the different music publishing entities involved.
This might be a completely fruitless endeavor. I may never hear back from folks. It might be too expensive for our modest self-published comic to afford (could I do an entire Kickstarter just to pay the licensing fees? haha). But I love these tunes and I have to try. So, I spent a lot of this week researching what publishing entities hold the rights to what songs, crafting a message to reach out to these folks, and starting to send some emails (I want to start slow, in case I learn anything in my initial interactions that might help me refine and make better my approach).
Luckily, the first step of this process is WAY easy these days: Searching out the publishers for the majority of all songs is mostly a snap, thanks to the BMI/ASCAP Songview Database, which can be found on both BMI and ASCAP’s websites (though the BMI implementation of the search seems to be the most full-featured and easiest to use). Interestingly, sometimes the publisher/publishing administrator is some mega entity, like the Universal Music Publishing Group, sometimes it’s a more mid-size entity, and sometimes you are essentially just emailing the artist, who may or may not be some personal hero of yours. This contact-making step is a bit more daunting than the search, but I crafted an email based on some advice from the folks at Wixen Music, one of the publishers/publishing administrators that I needed to contact. Head to that link to read what NOT to do (pretty informative), but here’s the gist of what you should do…
“Allow adequate time to obtain approvals. In many instances, we have to track down a touring songwriter for approval of your request, and this can take time.
Provide us with complete written details of the proposed use. For books, TV shows and films, we require plot descriptions and text pages showing the in-context placement of the proposed use.”
Again, the above is sourced from (and you can find more at) https://www.wixenmusic.com/licensing/how-to-clear-music/.
Easy enough, right? Again, we’ll see what happens. We’ve got time (Rob and I are aiming to have the story done at the end of next year), and I’ve had just enough success in the past reaching out to musicians to include an aspect of their material in Lifeformed that I have some hope: In the first volume of LF, I contacted Ivan Doroschuk of Men Without Hats and got permission to use the Men Without Hats logo on a t-shirt for one of the main characters, and in the second volume I did the same with Love and Rockets, and was also able to get permission to have Cleo sing some Rilo Kiley lyrics in a key scene.
As a fan and as a writer, I love the dose of reality this adds to stories vs. either making up some lyrics or using ancient songs in the public domain. I also like the idea that someone reading the comic might wonder what these lyrics are from, look at the small print of the comic or search them out and then end up listening to a song they’re unfamiliar with, and ultimately maybe discovering a new artist or album that they love.
I’ll keep you up to date on the process as replies come in. Fingers crossed.
In the meantime, if this puts you in a music-y mood, give a listen to some of the folks I mentioned above…
One of my favorite records of all time:
You know the Safety Dance, but the rest of this record has been neglected for too long:
The goodness…
… or check out a couple of the interviews I did for the wonderful TapeOp magazine back in the ancient times:
The Shins: Recording at home
Michael Penn: Perfect pop maestro
Have a great weekend!
Matt