Copyright-protected recordings are NOT ALLOWED!

[the physics teacher]

Oh dear I stumbled upon this thread. Wil the "upload your cover" button get removed from the site.

[Mike_S]

JP, there is no need to overthink this.

Yes, but is there an exception for cover?

I agree with cuthbert... we have been doing this since the site began, a long time. It works, nobody has any intention of making money from the covers... it's just for fun. I would say let's close this Pandoras box, forget about it and keep things how they currently are. But this is just my take.

Mike

[Pete C]

My understanding is that it's ok to record cover versions but you would need to obtain permission from the writer/copyright holder of the original if you wanted to release your cover for monetary gain. Remember that there must be thousands and thousands of cover versions on YouTube which we know is only concerned with copyrighted music being used on monetised channels.

[64Guitars]

Yes, but is there an exception for cover?

Oh dear I stumbled upon this thread. Wil the "upload your cover" button get removed from the site.

You're missing the point. We're talking about copyright-protected recordings, not songs. So, of course, covers are still allowed if you play all the parts yourself. Just don't post the original recording of the song you're covering, even if you've modified it by adding your own vocals or whatever, or removed parts using AI tools.

[Ted]

Yes, but is there an exception for cover?

Oh dear I stumbled upon this thread. Wil the "upload your cover" button get removed from the site.

You're missing the point.

Another missed point is one that I find much simpler to understand: The administrators of this site decide what they will allow and what they won't allow.

Yes, when we re-record all of the parts of a song it removes the issue of directly using copyrighted recordings. However the underlying composition itself may still be protected by copyright.

The administrators of this site should take as much legal risk as they are paid to take: none.  But they appear to be taking slightly more than no risk – for our benefit.

The fact that they allow covers at all is a wonderful aspect of this site. They could easily decide that they no longer are comfortable with their legal exposure,  prohibit covers, and then remove all prior covers that have been uploaded. We (the non-admins) could agree or disagree with that decision, but it's their decision to make.

I'd be very surprised if they have not already discussed among themselves what they are comfortable allowing vis-a-vis covers, and that they have chosen the present policy because it carries an acceptable minimum risk. Again: We (the non-admins) can agree or disagree with the policy, but the admins still prevail, as they should. Their job is to explain the policy clearly. They are not required to justify the policy to us, or to explain all of the multinational copyright laws that are being balanced.

This is a small community. I'm not an admin. But my guess is that the somewhat permissive approach to cover songs is because (a) we fly under the radar and (b) we don't monetize. Try uploading your cover songs to YouTube and see what happens. It's chaos. Some will be taken down, some will be demonetized, some will be untouched.

If, for some reason, Songcrafters were to draw a lot of traffic or media exposure, I would expect the shit to hit the fan. The first thing that would probably happen is that the site would go down – and not because of server load: because of cover songs. And when it re-emerged (if it re-emerged) the covers would be gone.

What I'm saying is: Accept the policy on covers. Appreciate it while it lasts.

[maxit]

fair

[Greeny]

'Only post stuff you've performed yourself' seems to be the easy-to-follow summary