Joining Sabam: yes or no?

Question: Is it true that you can prove the origin of a track by sending a tape/partiture/any recording to yourself... with the datestamp as official proof?

Answer: Sabam won a case against someone waiving a registered letter, so there goes that idea, right? No amount of self-adressed mail is going to weigh up in a court against a well-filled in document of a copyright organisation.

And of course your word and honor also has no legal value whatsoever in a court of law.

(copypaste from Jemenfish)

Here are some parts to remember. These are BASIC rules that you SHOULD know when you sign on to sabam and it's quite frankly amazing to sometimes see people say 'yeah I wrote myself into sabam because I'm getting a bit more gigs but don't worry not all my songs' yedi yeda.

1. Sabam signs artists with their real name, not their band name. This is in essence logical; As such, when you enter a song, you can attribute song production to someone else than the performing artist. As such, however, do note that, in signing AND ALSO RETROACTIVELY, they are presumed to protect ALL your work. This will also mean that, when your best mate is putting out a vinyl and you want to give him a track for free even when you got some airplay, well...YOU CAN'T. It's an all or nothing situation. Think about that BEFORE signing because there's no going back (they also protect your songs a while if you should leave...)

2. The use of copyrighted material in songs is highly regulated. This is why you read so many 'X sued Y' cases over some popular tunes. Does this mean they would go after your track for a measly 20 seconds of ripping some Aphex/Boards/whatever? No. Would this change if they were all hosted on, say, a website like electrobel, or you'd all host them on your server? Yes. It might.

3. Signing on to Sabam means every venue has to pay fees for having you play there live, including pubs, cellars, someone's dorm. Whatever. Additionally, us concert organisers have to fill in sheets AFTER paying them filling in each one of your songs you played, complete with minutes and seconds. Now, consider that, in order to receive your allocation, YOU need to correspond to them each and every track, and US organisers need to bother filling in tons of paperwork. Does this happen? Yeah, in the larger clubs who get regular controls on this and actually pay people for this kind of paperwork. Will most others be bothered? No. But they still have to pay the fee. You just will never see it.

4. They DO have a website, and it's in both French and Dutch perfectly understandable. Ok, there is a LOT of text and most of it is written in the Ye Olden Belgian Language style, but the basic rules are in there. http://www.sabam.be

So in short, are they the big bad evil schnoomie? No, I don't believe so. However, they're also highly uninteresting unless you have REGULAR airplay or tour REGULARLY in the popular clubs. Otherwise you will make yourself a LOT more uninteresting to the smaller venues/organisers

Originally posted by : reaman

Question: Is it true that you can prove the origin of a track by sending a tape/partiture/any recording to yourself... with the datestamp as official proof? (copypaste from Jemenfish)

That's been known to circulate as 'city myth'. It can actually be proven wrong by following some simple logic: If you WOULD go to court brandishing a registered letter and the defense would state how you could prove your cd was actually in it, you have no foot to stand on. Registered letters do not state contents. As to regular non-registered mail and using that as a proof, that will be laughed away. It's really simple to open any bubbled container over heat, insert a cd of your choice, and seal it shut.

Now, you could arguably spend 15 euro on DHL or similar packages where the contents CAN be filled in but if you're going to be paranoid enough to do that you might as well become a member of Sabam...

Originally posted by : Jemenfish

1. Sabam signs artists with their real name, not their band name. This is in essence logical; As such, when you enter a song, you can attribute song production to someone else than the performing artist. As such, however, do note that, in signing AND ALSO RETROACTIVELY, they are presumed to protect ALL your work. This will also mean that, when your best mate is putting out a vinyl and you want to give him a track for free even when you got some airplay, well...YOU CAN'T. It's an all or nothing situation. Think about that BEFORE signing because there's no going back (they also protect your songs a while if you should leave...)

a question: i'm in a band that is registred with sabam, but my name isn't registred yet (because i came in some months after the band was born). would all my ebel-stuff be copyrighted if i register with sabam for the songs i make with the band? 

Songs are under an artist name, not a band name. Never noticed the more famous acts crediting each and every song to who wrote it? It's the same thing basically. If you didn't write the songs, don't bother joining. The one that wrote them is a member and that's all that counts.

is, in this case, remixing a song the same as writing a song?

the problem is for a sabam registred artist is that the song can't sample more than 3 seconds from original material, unless u pay for it ureselfs, u can't share the music freely without the people sharing ur music online having to pay 30c per download, u oblige ur label to pay sabam monney for releasing ur music, .... non registred artist have much more possibilities for releasing music... ofcourse they can only count on sales or livesets income... than again every euro payed for u doesn't necessarily end up in ur pocket , more likely to pay for britneys new car or whatever...

my question is: if you remix a well known artist and end up on a cd, do you get money from sabam or do you have to be with uradex to get money? (are you the writer or a musiscian?)

I think that remixing a song would mean that u first have to pay sabam for the rights of using the original... afterwards all use of the remix would be payed to u I guess... maybe it depends on the releasing status ( did u release it or the original artist...) but I'm not sure on this matter  

i think you become an "arrangeur". If you are member of sabam, the original writer of the song gets a percentage of the rights and as a remixer you get a little part of the rights (i think it is around 10 or 12 %...). 

Originally posted by : strekie

my question is: if you remix a well known artist and end up on a cd, do you get money from sabam or do you have to be with uradex to get money? (are you the writer or a musiscian?)