Music Dilemma + Solutions

Instead of talking about some of my other tools that are going to help with my filming, I thought a more pressing issue at the moment was my music choice. I have the song picked out already ("Train in Vain", of course), but the difficult part getting the right to play the song during the film opening, as I do not want to commit copyright infringement. To get the rights for the song, I'll send an email to the record company that holds the rights for The Clash's music: Sony Music. 

I looked on their website for some contact information, and I found it easily enough. I'm now in the process of writing them an email, and it's a little intimidating if I have to say so, mostly because of the fact that I'm so worried they're just going to flat out say "no" or ignore the email. The latter is more likely just because they are such a large company that owns the rights to many artists' music. In any case, I'll try to lean into the overeager student angle to get them to respond. I'll try to message the Chief Executive Officer of Columbia Records as well (Columbia is the daughter company). The Clash songs are mainly licensed under Columbia, so I'll try to find that contact information as well. I figure if I'm persistent enough, I'll get someone's attention. I might even type up and send out an actual physical letter, as I have also found the Sony company address through their website. 

- I have found some contact information for Columbia Records through: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/columbia-records

However, if my email barrage does not work, I do have a plan B for the music. My teacher talked about a website that another student had found that has a lot of copyright-free music. It's called https://www.chosic.com and it has a large music library. I looked through it pretty thoroughly, and I found some good replacements if I don't have permission to use the song of my choice. It's a pretty simple system for downloading too, which I really like. I can easily add the song to my computer and will most likely have no trouble getting it onto DaVinci Resolve. I know DaVinci Resolve also has its own music library, but I'm not sure if they have anything resembling 80's punk rock. 

I did find one called "Cherry Metal" which does replicate a lot of that 80's rock feel. It'll be a pretty decent replacement if I don't get permission to play "Train in Vain". The song will be one of the later things put in during the post-production process, but I wanted to figure this out now. I'm really excited to start filming soon. My next blog posts will most likely be discussing that process and sharing my clips.