Ask the composer for sync rights? Why thank you!

Something happened a couple days ago that genuinely increased my level of hope for the human race.  Someone from the Indiana State School Music Association contacted me because they wanted sync rights to a couple of my unpublished pieces which were being performed by marching bands this fall.  For those that don’t know, sync rights include things like recording audio/video (at least I think so, although I’m no copyright expert, so don’t quote me).  For the record, no one from that organization or any other state school music organization has ever contacted me about sync rights.  I thought it was a nice gesture on their part, and it was obvious to me that they were trying to do the right thing.  I told them how refreshing it was to see an organization doing something like this.

There is a pretty large debate going on right now about copyright law, who owns music, how it gets shared, who can do what with music, etc.  For whatever reason, I’ve always been more interested in observing and analyzing all sides of these types of issues than actually forming opinions myself, so I often wondered what I’d think if something ever happened to me regarding my music and copyrighting.  For example, I’ve never been active about finding video companies that record bands playing my music to stick them with a copyright violation for not getting sync rights, but there are some composers that do.  This isn’t because I’m a spineless hermet, its because there is so much grey area surrounding copyright right now that I don’t feel the need to get involved in causing controversy.  Its a very nebulous subject.

Either way, in the meantime, I think its great that organizations like ISSMA are trying to do their part to keep the composers happy.  After all, we can’t keep track of every performing group in the world.