For instance if you don’t know that fire can burn you up and you decide to walk into it, it probably will hurt you…a lot. If you don’t understand the pull of gravity and jump off a twenty story building there is a very good chance (like 100%) that indeed it will hurt you.
When it came to the legal aspects of production what we didn’t know really could have hurt us greatly. By God’s grace, we were able to learn a truth before we got ourselves and the ministry into legal trouble.
We had assumed that if we wanted to use a piece of music in our film project we would simply include it. So for the first few weeks of development we carefully choose music we thought would fit into each teaching session. Then we began to learn from several of our music professional friends that, no indeed, you can NOT use any music you want. In fact all music (except for that which is classified Public Domain or was written especially for us and given to us) is protected by a very complex systems of licenses. In fact had we known just HOW complex all of this would be we would NEVER have used ANY music. But then I do believe God revealed only as much as He wanted us to know, a little at a time so we WOULD add the music He wanted in every section.
Our first step toward taking care of legal business in the music area was to ask Elise Norman to help us obtain the music licenses required. Elise is a beautiful mother of four, an attorney and a dynamic vocalist. She graciously agreed to help us. And so we began the process of gathering licenses needed.
Now for a little music license education:
Synchronization License gives us permission to use the music in a video. We would
need one of these for almost every piece of music we used.
Mechanical License gives us permission to record someone’s music using our own
vocalist and musicians.
Master Use License gives us permission to use a recording that is already in existence.
So almost every song would require two licenses. Deciding what kind of licenses we needed was only the very beginning. Then we had to identify the company who owned the music. Silly me…I thought you simply pick up the phone and call Toby Mac or the Gaithers and, bingo, we would have the required license. NOT SO! Companies own the music and it is not always easy to find the right company. Once we had that part identified we then sent in an application for the license.
I know God gives all of His children opportunities to learn patience but He really outdid Himself with us…and He used music license companies to teach us! It was not uncommon to wait two, three or four years before finalizing the paperwork. Once that is done then we get to write a check, usually about fifteen cents for every DVD duplicated with that song on it. In our case, it was one thousand.
All of this took immense amount of time and effort. Elise worked on this for more than two years and then because the task got overwhelming, she handed it back to us and we hired a music lawyer from Nashville at great expense to get the rest of the licenses . Two or three years later (and much money) he said he did not have the time to complete this and turned it over to a music license friend of his who did this on the side. That was a disaster as this fellow had all of our records for more than eighteen months. During that time we had the opportunity to spend more money and receive little help. We fired him at the end of a very frustrating relationship and Jodie Mannion took over the work . Jodie worked on it for two years and we then hired a music service company to help her and now after nine years it looks like we are about at the end with only two more licenses to finalize.
I am so grateful to God that He did not allow us to find out the hard way that what we don’t know can ruin a person, company, a nation.
Lamentations 3:22
Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed,
Because His compassions fail not.
They are new every morning.
Great is your faithfulness.
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