I am structuring a manipulation act and was wondering about the music.Can I get sued because I am using a song out of a album in public?And if I can get sued for this,how will I find some kind of music that will not give me problems in the future.Pls give me more info about this subject.

Where are you planning on performing? On the street?

For most music used in a public performance you need to pay a royalty. Most theaters and places where music is performed already have an arrangement with the organizations that collect these royalties for music played in those venues.

Technically, you should be pay if you play such music in public, although you probably won't get caught.

Alternatively, there is "open source" music, stuff that is licensed for use for free. There are also folks on the 'net who will compose/perform music for you for a very reasonable fee.

This issue can get really complicated. In an interview on Magic Newswire, Gay Blackstone mentioned that most of the music used in the various routines on Masters of Illusion had to be replaced because folks didn't have permission to use the music on TV.

Thanks for the info marty.sasaki.And Cmdash24,my act is for stage.If somebody can give more info for this, it will be great.

As Marty mentioned, you might be able to find music through free or freely-useable sources...

I haven't tried to use this, but you might be able to find something on http://ccmixter.org . The music seems to range from pretty good to terrible (in my opinion) and you might be able to talk to the artist and get permission to use it for commercial performances, or could negotiate a deal with them. The stuff I've seen on the site is under Creative Commons, but under such a license that it is not useable for commercial purposes without permission of the artist. It doesn't hurt to ask!

Another site that has caught my eye is Magnatune ( http://magnatune.com "We are not evil.") who you might be able to work out some licensing deal. They adjust their scale according to the cost of the project, and they have some pretty good and a wide variety of stuff there!

You might also find something free at http://archive.org, the Internet archive, which hosts free stuff.

Good luck!

A pretty cool thing happened to me a little while ago when I went to a concert by a certain musician that I like very much.

During the meet-and-greet after the program, I asked this man if I could have permission to use his original instrumental guitar music as background for my show.

He said yes!

Sometimes all you gotta do is ask, and you shall receive!

Carrie

Local community colleges have keyboarding classes.
Write your own music, no issues.
At least, that's what I always did.

Look at the magic music cds by Arthur Stead. He's a very talented, long-standing musician who's worked with magicians, like Duane Laflin, to produce lots of royalty free music.

He has two cds of songs; one of effects; one for Christmas and another for Halloween. Each are $30 (but some dealers sell them cheaper.)

http://www.arthurstead.com/

I've been very impressed so far with my purchases and watching other magicians use this music.

What would be helpful is if someone who KNOWS how this works would post such, and tell us how much we have to pay, to whom, how to find them and what the rules are. Not hearsay, but real info.

In my experience, it is often important to match the music to the routine. Generic or unknown music just will not work. I do a routine to "Hand Jive", for example, that NEEDS that music. If you can use the royalty-free music that's great, but sometimes you need a very specific piece of music...

Jim