Legal Or Not? Options

[JusClownin]

Hi guys. Wasn't sure if this was the best forum for this, but here goes.

As a hobby, a friend and I record vocals on random instrumentals of recordings that we usually find on CD singles at the record store or on the net.

They are pretty humorous and have little or nothing to do with the artist who created the instrumental. We want to create site where we can share our renditions with the public for free. We both have full time careers and have absolutely no interest in selling these songs, not that anyone would buy them, or making profit off the site. It would be fully funded by out of our own pocket and we wouldn't have any advertisers. Just a personal site.

Does anyone know if we'd run into any legal problems by doing this? Like I said, it's just a hobby. Basically, we're just two old friends from high school that get together maybe 3 times a year, drink and have some fun jamming on these recordings. They are by far from "great" quality, but they're actually not so bad, for what it's worth.

Anyway, any input or advice would be great. I just fear having some big-wig artist or label sue us for something so trivial.

[straydog]

A few remarks:

There are decent people everywhere, of course. Usually those that are close to the actual music production (not managers etc.). But, no matter what their intentions, they usually have little power to change overall company policy.

In Greece there is only one company allowed to deal with royalties and they don't allow partial commercial use (not sure if it's the correct term, but anyhow you're not allowed to ask for money from the TV or the Radio only, or whatever you see fit, it's all or nothing.). Otherwise you're stuck with bored goverment guys and have to do all the legal hunting yourself. Monopoly...

A few years ago some artists went against them in court, demanding they should allow this partial use, and increase minimum percentage for newly signed artists from 11% to 25% (might be a slight mistake in numbers, don't have the time to look it up). Artists won the court, but the company never actually did what it should. Why? Because they found out it would be cheaper for them to pay the monthly fine than actually increase their giveouts to artists. Justice can't be blind when it has money in its hands...

Don't know if it still works that way now since I'm still not publishing records, and unless some newspaper writes something, my information is a bit outdated. Anyway, I hope that sometime we get close to the rest of Europe.

The internet has been a huge revolution for artists and independent companies alike, we should indeed try to figure out ways to make it so that things become fairer and better, before salesmen seize absolute control of it....

"Depends on the case, but if someone wanted to sample my track I sure wanted that person to ask permission first and I'd like to hear the music and the context before giving it the green light."

I wouldn't want to check out the music so much, since I think I'm not in position to judge how someone interprets it, but political? Sure.

Yes, it's still all about the music....
And this is a very interesting conversation indeed.

(Off to play some tunes)