legality of putting up popular music on your site

Hello, I have come back from a long travel from around the world and have found some really cool unique bands. I have some photo galleries up and I wanted to put up a page to introduce my friends to some of the music I've heard....I feel it helps people get a better picture of my trip...it fits the music.
It's not up for download...I don't think people can take them from my site. I just wanted to put up some of the songs for a few weeks while my friends look at the photo's then take them down. Since the songs are mine...I should be able to play them for my friends, yeah?

People have been sued for placing music online. The songs are not yours, they belong to the artist who with their distributors have control on how the songs can get to the public.

You might be better off finding links to the artists sites and directing people that way.

It might depend on which country you are in but you can typically do two things; take the CD to a friends house and play it, and lend that physical CD to a friend. Friend would include family.

I'm not at all a lawyer... but wouldn't putting a music file that is not available for download on a website for people to hear be the same as me driving down the road with my windows down and stereo blastin?

Maybe if you only put part of the song and give proper credits.

See, I am a video editor for my church. They give me a topic, and I find movieclips and splice them all together and show them to the audience. Everything is all good in that respect because at the begining of each clip i show the credits (Title, and copyright info).

anyway, that is my $0.02

Even if you set the songs up so they can't be downloaded or retrieved from the cache, they could be recorded with sound-capture apps.

Brown Study said:

Even if... they could be recorded with sound-capture apps.

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this is true, but so can free internet radio... even iTunes radio. And I used to record music from the real radio into a tape, and then I made my own cds from those tapes.

If they are Idependant bands, they don't have a label and would probably like the publicity. And you can always ask the artist for permission

mshale said:

this is true, but so can free internet radio... even iTunes radio. And I used to record music from the real radio into a tape, and then I made my own cds from those tapes

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Most if not all internet radio has a license to play the music. Streaming copyrighted music can get you in trouble just like downloading and sharing copyrighted music.

I would find other ways to promote the band like suggested.

you could always make a video from your pictures and use clips of the music to go with the photos.. much like people creating music videos from youtube. This way the songs are not in their entirety....

Just a thought.....

As long as you are not using the music for financial gain...by either selling the music or another product on the site and you give the proper credit to the band & label you will have no problem at all...

If you're really paranoid you can shoot them an email and let them know what you are doing or intend on doing...Then sit back and wait for all the thank you's to roll in...

There is also a good chance (especially from smaller labels or lesser known bands) that they will link to your site as you should do to theirs...

There is one big problem though...You need to be sure your server can handle all the traffic...these things have a way of just taking off...

Walking the CD over to everyone's house that hits your site does not sound too practical...

Sounds like a very cool project...post the link once it's up....

I got your PM. I like the site. The music is awesome too. Great job!

thx for looking and the help with the music bits...site is...www.iisource.net if you wanna take a look.
cheers

SWEET....Very nice.....