MUSIC VIDEO COPYRIGHT

COPYRIGHTCopyright is a form of intellectual property, which is applicable to certain forms of creative work. It essentially guarantees that nobody but the person who owns the rights to a piece of work can profit off of it, because it is their property.

Music videos effectively have the same copyright laws on them as most other video works do. The music used in the video will be copyrighted regardless, and the musicians will likely own the rights to it which is why only they will be able to make a music video for it. They would then be able to copyright the images that form the video as well.

FAIR USEHowever, we will be able to use whatever song we choose regardless of whether the copyright holder grants us permission, because under fair use whatever content we use is protected. Fair Use is an exception to copyright, which states that copyrighted material can be used in various scenarios, one of which being if it’s for nonprofit educational uses. Because our music video is a school project and will not be made public, we are able to claim proper usage of the copyrighted material under Fair Use.

COPYRIGHT PERMISSIONDespite this, we will still email the record labels to ask for permission to use the song, as when we upload the music video it will likely trigger YouTube’s automated copyright detection, and having written permission to use the song will make this easier to bypass.