Advise needed from ILMers: How do I go about getting permission to record someone else's song???

If you cover a song, you may need to pay royalties. It's perfectly fine to cover a song live, because the venue you perform in usually pays some kind of lisencing just to have live or recorded music played there. In that case, the venue has already paid said live royalties.

If you are a record company which releases a cover, you are supposed to pay "mechanical" royalties to the publishing company that owns the rights to the songs. But lots of record companies, especially small ones, don't bother. As someone else pointed out, there may be a threshold of a certain amount of copies to be sold below which mechanicals do not have to be paid.

(Please bear in mind, this may be different in your country, this was specifically for the UK.)

http://www.cmrra.ca/Mechanical_Licensing/mechanical_licensing.html

The minimum number of copies for which a mechanical license will be issued is 200, whether or not you are pressing or importing a smaller number of copies. Licenses for this quantity are issued at the price of $15.00 per song (assuming that the running time of the recording in question is five minutes or less; the rate for each additional minute or partial minute of running time in this case is $3.00).

I'm not sure if that means that under 200 copies you don't have to worry about it, or if you have to purchase a lisence for 200 copies even if you only press 100.

That's how I read it.

http://www.songfile.com/

(And, see, this is what really f*cks me off about all the twunts on ILE banging on about how they "don't believe in copyright" etc. Copyright actually exists to *protect* the individual against the corporation (though I understand well enough how it's misused for the wrong way around.))

in the u.s. at least, you don't need to declare anything if you cover a song in a club or on a radio station. it's the radio station's job, not yours, to track what goes out over its airwaves, and the club plays a blanket license to the collecting agencies covering any and all songs that are performed there. the collecting agencies dole out that money to publishers and songwriters based on statistic samples, but no one has a list of every song played in every club.

when you cover it on a record, the record company (or you, if you are the record company) need to file paperwork with the proper collecting agency to let them know about the cover, and then you have to pay them royalties, but you don't have to ask them permission. the permission is automatic, as is the royalty rate. unless you significantly change the music or lyrics, as has been noted above.

(Because technically, if you change the song, you become a co-writer from a publishing standpoint (i.e. the description "change a word, take a third") and you need to come up with some plan with the publisher whereby you relinquish (or share in some cases) the publishing money from the song.)

it's more than that. the original writer/publisher has no power to stop other people from recording his song as written, but he has the absolute right to say no to anyone who tries to muck with the composition. you need direct permission to release a significantly altered cover on a record, regardless of whether you want to put your name on the song or not. if the songwriter doesn't want the song to be rewritten -- or used as part of a new composition -- he can block it. (unless you can convincingly claim that your altered version is a legally protected parody.)

"Just a bit of fun, so lets be cool."

The band were asked if they would do "Agadoo" but the band replied that as they had not paid the mcps, they couldn't do it legally. After a few more requests, they said "Ah, what the heck, OK" and then hit the other reason why you shouldn't do songs you havent rehearsed when you are a seven piece band. Cocked it up royally. Wish I'd taped it.