When an artist wants to arrange a copyrighted piece of music that was previously written by another artist he or she must follow some fairly strict guidelines to make sure that the United States Copyright Law is followed. Arranging a piece of music for a new audience involves first getting permission from the original copyright holder and negotiating a reasonable fee to be paid to the copyright holder for the arrangement of the song. Arrangers can be asked to pay from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars for the permission to alter an existing work. The final fee is dependent on many things most significant being the value of the original work, but in the end, the fee is set as high or as low as the copyright holder sees fit. If the arranger does not agree with the fee then they will not legally be able to arrange the song in any way.
There are exceptions to these rules. First, the arrangement of a song for use in an educational instruction environment is usually permitted without needing permission unless the piece is to be performed in public and the student is not making any money off of the arrangement. Second, if the song's copyright has expired and the arrangement is being done from the original source. This means that you can only arrange from the original composition, not a more recent copyrighted arrangement or edition of the same song. Lastly, permission to arrange is not required when doing a legitimate critical or humorous parody of an existing song.
Chad Criswell - Chad Criswell is a professional educator and freelance technology writer for numerous online and print publications throughout the United ...
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