Karaoke Forums

Hello Karaoke Friends...

I am wondering if anyone can point me in the right direction.  I have been doing updates for my karaoke website and have recently included a Picture Gallery.  My picture gallery contains pics from my gigs with people singing and dancing.

I didn't see any harm in this but I got to thinking...  Is it okay/legal to post pictures of folks on your business website?  Anyone else post pictures on the web of your gigs?

If anyone has any thawts or comments, that would be great.

thanx,
---wallyd

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---wallyd

I'm not a lawyer or expert on this matter but I did do some research and talk to a lawyer when this question came up for a community forum web site that I run -- here's a short summary of what I learned:

There's generally not any expectation (or guarantee) of privacy while you are in public including at public events or an establishment such as a bar. If you are photographed in public, unless the photo would be used to defame or cause you harm in some way, it's fair game to be used in promotional material, web sites, etc.

It would be different if the photo was being taken explicitly to be sold, say to a magazine or as stock photography. Then a model release would be required.

Think about all the photos/videos taken of celebrities in public, coming out of night clubs, on the beach, etc. and then plastered all over TV and the web. If that's permissable then I don't see some "karaoke stars" having any issue with what you are doing.

Of course you could always ask your singers if they are OK with it before posting a photo...

Hope this helps.

I'd probably just hand everyone a simple, quick release form and if they don't want their pics on a website, they could let you know. No sense in upsetting someone unnecessarily. There are probably people who, for one reason or another, wouldn't want to be pictured on a website.  I always ask people before I use their pic for promotional material if they mind...if they do, I don't use it.

k

I would make some announcements regarding your web site and photo gallery and I'm sure when they see you taking pics --if they have an objection  they will tell you ...Like when you take the pic of the married man singing a duet with his 21yr old girlfriend  LMAO  LMAO  LMAO  LMAO  LMAO

Just let them know when you are taking the pics that these are going to be used for your picture gallery - part of your own promotions for the website - rare occasion you will get someone to say please don't take my picture (then you have to wonder & start watching Americas Most Wanted ).
I've had mine up for years & the only complaint I get is usually, oh gawd that pic is awful, please take it down - DONE!  
http://www.lonmanproductions.com/photogallery.html
Which reminds me I need to do a major update, I got caught up in keeping my MySpace page current I totally forgot about my internal pages of my own site.  Sheesh!

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Lonnie what do you think about videos?  They probably would take some sort of streaming license but I dont think there would any problems. I plan on putting them on youtube then inserting on site.

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I know the RIAA sued a person for using their karaoke video on YouTube.  I'll try to find the link, it was sometime last year or year before if I recall.  
http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/RIAA-going ... rmers.html
That was just an article, can't find the actual court link I thought I saw at one time.
I like the idea of video, one of our members here streams their show live nightly - think this may be a little extreme - he claims it's totally legal, don't know, but cool idea.

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Check out the ustream.tv  thread I couldnt see doing a whole show but featuring a few singers or sharing here would be interesting.

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well today Myspace starts doing karaoke on their site so I can't imagine that there'd be a problem posting video on your own site.

k

Chiming in again, internet music streaming is also something I researched for a web site I work on:

http://www.ascap.com/weblicense/webfaq.html

karyoker is correct -- you technically need to license it to be legal

Did you enquire from ASCAP about prices?

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I used the worksheet they provide here:

http://www.ascap.com/weblicense/release5.0.pdf

This was over a year ago. I seem to remember coming up with around $100-$150 annually for a small non-interactive (users can't download the music) site. Calculations are based on revenue, user sessions and some other parameters that I really didn't have good numbers on at the time so I'm not sure if my initial calculation was meaningful. Plus there's BMI and SESAC and the publishers to deal with so this particular web site back burnered the whole music streaming for the time being.

Just to add -- certainly all the big social networking sites (myspace, youtube, etc) have the legal staff to get this all covered without blinking an eye. It's a bit more of a challenge for us small players and obviously there are many small sites that don't bother with any of this stuff.

Edit -- just checked the ASCAP site again myself, looks like the minimum fee is set at $288/yr. Can't recall if that was in place a year ago or not.

To get this back on topic, pictures are definitely simpler than video in my mind  :spin: