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Clearance.com ?

Anyone ever use Evan M. Greenspan clearance.com for music rights? I was thinking of going with the cheaper option of buying the label's contact information to purchase music rights for my short.
 
I wouldn't use this site, no. First of all, it's not difficult to find out who owns rights to the music you want to use. Often it's as simple as heading over to Amazon Music and looking at the record label that put out the album. They're trying to make it seem like they're giving you some "premium" service of direct contact info, but I doubt it's anything worth paying for.

I'd use Harry Fox. Harry Fox tells you exactly who owns the rights to the song just by searching their directory. Furthermore, you don't "hire" Harry Fox to go out and get rights for you... You just add them to your cart for a fee, that usually isn't too large.

This Clearance website just looks like it's trying to bully and scare-tactic people into buying their services - Thus having pictures of skulls, bars, jail, and whatnot all over their website on pages like "HORROR STORIES!!"

Avoid it. Just go get your rights with Harry Fox, or contact the rights owner on your own by doing some research.

Oh, and another thing... The whole "Click on the page titled 'Fees' so we can divert you to contacting us instead of posting our fees' is a cop-out to try to capitalize on people not understanding the industry. And I'm sure it helps they furnished the page like Shawshank Prison.
 
I agree with Beatlesfan's post. You can check on ASACAP's website. They have a search engine that allows you to see who the label/publisher is. From there you'd be able to track down the contact information to ask for clearance.

In the case of a piece being in the public domain, there are websites set up for that as well where you can search through their database.

Hope this helps.

- Mike
 
I've not used the site, but it doesn't seem unreasonable. He's offering to do all the legwork for you, for a fee. If you'd rather do it all yourself, he's even listed what steps are involved.

Convenience has a value, sure. :)
 
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