Approaching a big scary label to license a track for remixing?

[tonyc2002]

How does one go about approaching such an unusual task?

[The_Laughing_Man]

You probably firstly need to get details for their licensing/publishing department.
I`m assuming you want to license one of their tracks for yourself to remix.
Present your case, how much of the original you want to use, in seconds, what you want to use, what your planned distribution is, projected sales if any.
Financial and marketing information is basically what they are going to want.

If you want to remix something and it will be a techno remix, don`t even bother licensing it, there isn`t enough money in the scene for any big label to bother suing over rights anyway.

[Jay Pace]

what do you want to do tony?

[tonyc2002]

Well basically a mate has done a blinding remix of Dreams by Miss Shiva and we want to try and release it officially. Thing is, its licensed to Sony's Dance Division in Germany. So I'm thinking do I get in touch with them directly via phone or try ringing Sony UK. I'm just wandering if they would even bother to give me the time of day to be honest though :lol:

[The_Laughing_Man]

Well basically a mate has done a blinding remix of Dreams by Miss Shiva and we want to try and release it officially. Thing is, its licensed to Sony's Dance Division in Germany. So I'm thinking do I get in touch with them directly via phone or try ringing Sony UK. I'm just wandering if they would even bother to give me the time of day to be honest though :lol:

What type of remix?
House, techno, drum and bass?

[tonyc2002]

What type of remix?
House, techno, drum and bass?

Sorry mate, its a trance remix (tech-trance to be specific). Its fairly commercial sounding but still quite hard.

[The_Laughing_Man]

Well I wouldn`t worry about licensing then.

Do what everyone does.
Bring out a white label bootleg.
If it picks up and gets big success on the dancefloors and the label that owns the rights and thinks they can make any money, then they will get in touch with the distrib.
What will then happen is common, they will re-issue the remix via themselves, and offer you a small percentage as the remixer.

OTher than that a large label won`t bother taking a risk.
Your bootleg will prove if there is a market for them.

[DannyBlack]

F*ck em. Steal the parts you need and white label it. It's the best way.

[tonyc2002]

Yeah thats all cool. Jase (the guy who wrote it) has fired it off to loads of DJ's so we'll see if it gets a good reaction.

[don_flintoni]

What happened to the track Tony? did it make it to w/l?

[tonyc2002]

Interesting story, well, not really...

Jason, wrote two tracks, the first one used samples from that new-agey track "Enigma" with the monks chanting and shit. We tracked down the label (Virgin) but basically they told us to **** off by saying the original copyright holder wasn't interested in licensing any samples.

As for "Dreams" we haven't been able to track down the right person to talk to but they haven't explicitly said no...


PS
If anyone wants either track give me a shout cause I doubt we'll ever get them onto the stores.

[tonyc2002]

Well, at least not for ages :)