Hi! Awhile back, I found a fairly large archive of old stock music from early Hanna Barbera productions and I'm wondering if I can use any of it. Most of it is uncredited, so I'm unsure if it's in the public domain or not and I don't know how I would find out. Can anyone here shed light on this?
Question About Stock Music
- Thread starter LugofilmLtd
- Start date
No. More importantly... never consider using unlicensed content in anything you produce. The negatives just outweigh the positives.
Public Domain: This is 75 years from the death of the writer... if a corporate entity doesn't renew the copyright. I can almost promise that a corporate entity still owns the HB music catalog.
If you're doing a no-budget project consider Moby Gratsi or Kevin McCloud or other creative commons material. This may become problematic if you plan to acquire distribution or if this is a corporate venture. Honestly though... stock music is so cheap these days, why not just license something from a production music catalog?
Public Domain: This is 75 years from the death of the writer... if a corporate entity doesn't renew the copyright. I can almost promise that a corporate entity still owns the HB music catalog.
If you're doing a no-budget project consider Moby Gratsi or Kevin McCloud or other creative commons material. This may become problematic if you plan to acquire distribution or if this is a corporate venture. Honestly though... stock music is so cheap these days, why not just license something from a production music catalog?
While it is, admittedly, a rare thing, there are cases where a work falls into the public domain by default because there's no one left to claim the copyright on it. I'm trying to figure out whether or not that's happened here. Is there a search engine or anything where I might be able to find that out? Does anyone know? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
EDIT: Further research has uncovered the answer. The music cues in question are from the Capitol Hi-Q production music library. According to the US copyright office, if a work published before 1978 does not include a copyright notice somewhere on the packaging, then it's not copyrighted. Period. Looking at the record sleeve via a google image search, the Hi-Q library has no such notice. On that basis, I am assuming that it is safe to use.
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Are you this hard-headed in everything or just when you don't want to spend money? 
My mother taught me to spell assume in the 2nd grade by saying... "Remember. When you assume something you make an ASS out of U and ME."
Copyright law has nothing to do with "packaging" in regard to music. For example... Do you know that ALL MUSIC has TWO copyrights associated with every song recorded? You have to clear them both for legal use. One of them is for the recording (which can be packaged). The other is for the underlying intellectual property (which has no package) aka the song itself.
My mother taught me to spell assume in the 2nd grade by saying... "Remember. When you assume something you make an ASS out of U and ME."
Copyright law has nothing to do with "packaging" in regard to music. For example... Do you know that ALL MUSIC has TWO copyrights associated with every song recorded? You have to clear them both for legal use. One of them is for the recording (which can be packaged). The other is for the underlying intellectual property (which has no package) aka the song itself.
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Joe gave you solid advice. If I were you, I wouldn't.
If you wish to continue, I suggest you go and talk to the legal and licensing departments of MGM studios or better yet, hire a clearance specialist.
If you wish to continue, I suggest you go and talk to the legal and licensing departments of MGM studios or better yet, hire a clearance specialist.