Peter Gabriel wants to license songs for your wedding

MUSIC LICENSING FIRMS Cuesongs and Ricall Express have decided to try to lure home video makers to license their songs by cutting royalty prices.

Cuesongs, which is backed by Peter Gabriel of Genesis fame and Ricall Express will cover tracks from Sony Music and EMI Music along with a host of independent labels. The songs will be aimed at the sort of videos that usually end up on web sites such as Youtube and Vimeo.

According to the BBC, individuals, small businesses and non-profit organisations can have access to these wonderful melodies for a fee. It might be news to many that non-profit organisations will have to pay a fee to use one of Gabriel's licensed songs.

Gabriel told the BBC, "By introducing low prices and easy online access, Cuesongs is creating a new market for music, to satisfy a huge untapped demand that can begin to provide new income streams for artists." Ah, the artists, the very people the music industry talks about most while lining its own pockets at the expense of the artists.

Not surprisingly, Chris Cooke, co-founder of the business music network CMU told the BBC there might be a catch, with users perhaps not needing to fork over cash to Cuesongs or Ricall Express. "If the target clients post videos via YouTube, they may well already be covered to an extent by Google's blanket licences with the big record companies and collecting societies," said Cooke.

However Cooke warned that music copyright holders could ask Google to remove the music at any time, even though Google is forced to pay a royalty every time the video is played. Yes, that is the absurdity of the entertainment industry MAFIAA, it can take down pieces of content even though it is getting paid for it.

So if you fancy possibly giving the music industry two cheques every time your home video is played, Gabriel and his mates are ready to hear from you. Or you could just stick to videoing Charlie Chaplin impressions. µ