As part of our Coaching Service, we make Lyric Sheets for a small number of titles available as PDFs to those engaging in Coaching sessions. Analysis of existing works is an important part of any artist’s development, and therefore an important part of our coaching service.
As a community of songwriters, The Song Foundry takes authors’ Intellectual Property Rights very seriously. Nonetheless Educational Fair Use laws and even the Digital Millennium Copyright Act are not always clear cut on what constitutes acceptable legal use in these circumstances.
Our rationale for distributing these Lyric Sheets is as follows:
- The lyrics we reproduce are legally, readily and freely available elsewhere on the Internet (at sites such as azlyrics.com and metrolyrics.com). We create our own versions to maintain high standards of accuracy and presentation, and to ensure that suitable author credits and copyright notices are included.
- Lyric sheets are not typically available for sale. We check our chosen titles are not readily available through any form of Digital Rights Management (DRM), so that we aren’t circumventing any legal means of purchasing these lyrics.
- We post links to retailers that sell the related tracks and/or sheet music through DRM services, and encourage those engaging in Coaching with us buy these additional materials if they would find them useful.
- Our lyrics are reproduced exclusively for private educational use and are accessed by a password-protected page to ensure they aren’t available publicly and to prevent them appearing in Google search results.
- We’re reproducing lyrics in exactly the same way thousands of schools, colleges, universities and other educational and training environments do. Such reproduction doesn’t compete with the commercial exploitation of the work.
- In our experience, most authors are flattered at having their work admired and appraised by those training in their field.
All the same, at The Song Foundry we remain committed to respecting the rights of copyright holders, their agents and representatives. If you are affiliated with any of the material we offer for download and have any questions about this policy or would like the material removed, you are welcome to contact us. We believe we’re doing you a service by encouraging our coaching clients to engage with your work legally and purchase your work where appropriate DRM services exist, but we’ll accept your decision.
If you wish to submit a Takedown Notice you may do so via the Contact Page. You should provide the details of the material you wish to have taken down, reasonable contact details for us to follow up, as well as proof that you are authorized to issue a Takedown Notice as, or on behalf of, the copyright holder. We endeavor to comply with all legitimate requests within five working days.
July 2015