Copyright

  • Unknown's avatar
    airikiskul · Member ·

    Hi! I’m a new user on this website and I had a few legal questions. First, is it legal to embed a song onto my website? What about a link? To what extent is sharing music legal, and what crosses too far and makes it illegal? Thanks!

    WP.com: Yes
    Correct account: Yes

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • staff-totoro · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    Apologies, but we cannot offer legal advice, as that can vary quite a bit based on the country, locality, and city you are located in. Generally speaking, it is fine when you embed from services like YouTube, Soundcloud, Spotify, etc.

    On those platforms, the content owner usually can specify on their end if content can be embedded on other sites or not. It can be the case that you will try to embed a song from Spotify on your site, and it will not work, indicating that the owner of the content has blocked that kind of sharing.

    However, if you embed content on your site from an outside service, and it does work (i.e., you can see/hear it fine), that is permitted. We do not recommend sharing any content that you do not own the copyright to or have the permission of the copyright holder to share.

    More info on how to embed audio on your WordPress.com site is here: https://wordpress.com/support/audio/

    Hope that helps. Please let us know if you have any more questions.

  • Unknown's avatar
    airikiskul · Member ·

    Thanks for responding! That helped a lot, but I have one more question. Is embedding the link from Spotify the same as using the “Audio Player” feature? When I use the audio player feature, I does not show that the song is from Spotify. Is this still legal? I live in America if that helps.

  • staff-ozmodiar · Staff ·

    Hi,

    Can you show an example of what you are doing in a post/page on your site?

  • Unknown's avatar
    airikiskul · Member ·

    Sure!

    https://songtower.wordpress.com/2022/05/16/the-nights-avicii/

    Here is the link to what I’m working on at the moment. It has a Spotify link embedded into it, which to my understanding is not a problem. My question was if it was legal to turn that embed into an audio player, which is just a play button and bar.

    Aside from the music itself, I was also wondering if my use of the featured picture, the album cover, was allowed. Lyrics too, is it ok to quote lyrics of a song I’m talking about?

    Thanks!

  • fstat · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    My question was if it was legal to turn that embed into an audio player, which is just a play button and bar.

    Even if you could, it wouldn’t be possible. When you use the Audio block to paste a Spotify link, it automatically converts into a Spotify block.

    I was also wondering if my use of the featured picture, the album cover, was allowed. Lyrics too, is it ok to quote lyrics of a song I’m talking about?

    Both the album cover and the lyrics could be subject to copyright. So, again we cannot advise on that, and you should seek legal advice from a professional.

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