The loops are royalty free. The 8-pack as a whole is not.

M

All music made with any Acid version (Screenblast, Pro, Music, etc) is yours. The loops in the 8-packs can be used for your purposes too. However, you can't use the loop alone as yours. They MUST be in a song. This is for any loop from Sony/SoFo. But, they can be alone in the song (ie a drum beat or a gong).

So if I'm reading what everyone is saying correctly the sample compositions that come with the 8 packs and the loop libraries ARE copyright and I just cannot record them straight out of Acid and use them.
For someone like myself with negative musical talent that kind of scares me right off going down that path, anything that I could create that wasn't musically 'offensive' would have to be a derivative work for sure.

Thanks for the input guys, sure wasn't easy to work out from the web site. Looks like I'll have to go down another path, was trying to keep things in the 'family'.

It's been awhile since I downloaded an 8 pack but don't they tell you who made it? Do they have a way to contact that person? If so, then just ask. The worst they could say is no.

I asked this about a 3-7 days ago? Its was within Spot's pre-annoucement thread. I believe HFriar is on the money . . . Go see farss .. it worried me enough to ask the question. . ..

I understnad it as:

1 - Own copy of Acid any flavour

2 - Loops are used in a song

3 - You can't resell "straight" loops as your own they have to be part of a song

4 - The "regular" freebies - the reason I originally asked - can be used, 1 to 3 above also taken into account, AND as Spot implies, it is a way to get you to buy more Loops .. seems a good deal to me ..

However, the problem for one living outside state, the "shipping" costs of a full loopy package is about the same as the loops!?!?! Unless I got it wrong . .Loops on Demand maybe the way I will wanna go . .

Grazie

I'll have to have a look see if they provide a method for contacting the author. It does seem to be a potential issue that's a bit glossed over in my opinion.

They seem to provide those compositions as a 'starting point' and that seems to me to be an invitation for some very nasty problems. Don't quite see why they would let the sitaution develop that way. I can see the sense in having some top line composer put out something with the library as an EXAMPLE of the great things you can do with the library. Maybe it'd make some sense if they also supplied a 'starting point' composition. They pay the composer to do a work for hire and everyone who buys the library gets to use it royalty free full stop.

This has become quite a headache (I know welcome to the copyright nightmare). Originaly all the job was to do was convert a program that used to sell on VHS to DVD. You'd think that would be simple enough. Client owns the copyright so how muc trouble could that be. EXCEPT there's music on the damn thing. Now if I was just going from tape to DVD as a one to one copy I wouldn't freak out except there's now menus and the client wanst music to go with the menus.

Simple enough, use the music from the program. Except it's not public domain music, it's most likely royalty free stuff from someone like Digital Juice. I haven't paid a penny to whoever 'owns' that music and for certain they should get some money for the new use of their music, fair enough I say. But then I've got to go down the slippery path of finding out who owns it etc.

All of which would be fine if this job was worth 100 times more than it is, I can just imagine the client reaction when I tell him $500 to master as a DVD and $5,000 for sorting out 90 seconds of music.

Grazie,
so Sony still haven't injected any reality into the shipping cost issue?

Last time I looked it was like $37.50 to ship a CD!

As i said over a year ago, I'm certain they're only passing on their costs but I KNOW there're cheaper carriers.

Grazie, maybe there's someone on these forums you trust that lives in the States? Have Sony ship your CDs their then have that person ship them to you for less $$$.

M

I don't think owning Acid is a prerequisit for loop usage being "royalty-free." Owning the loop library the loop came from is the issue, otherwise Sonar, Fruity, Cubase, Soundtrack users wouldn't be able to use Sony loops in commercial productions? As a library producer/seller, my company doesn't tie the usage to a particular app. It wouldn't make sense.

Also, it's mixing the loops with any medium. IE - you can use a loop by itself if it's in a video, etc. Otherwise, why bother offering complete beds in some libraries? There are also a lot of nice loops in the two James Johnson libraries that could easily be used by themselves as ambient backdrops. I may be wrong about this, but, again, it wouldn't make sense to put the additional restriction on it.

You're right. I'm so used to Acid being "the" looping program I forgot that you can mix the loops in any program (vegas too). Infact, the music for the games Quake 2 & 3 was mixed in acid, and the guy who did it sells the loops he made (www.sonicmayhem.com). You can download a demo of the loops if you want (1 big mp3 file)

Lessee ... last time i had SONY ship a disc to me here in New York i think the shipping charge was under $10. I've also shipped a disc to England for about $4 and it arrived in less than a week. It certainly sounds like a doable thing.

I have a college student friend in Ontario who has me buy text books for her from half.com because it's cheaper to pay shipping to the US, then a second shipping charge to Ontario, plus import fees than what half.com would charge to ship it directly to her. Craziness.

Yeah, Sony charges $5 for domestic ground and $8 for 2nd day.