Everything You Need to Know About Copyrights in Your Podcasts

This blog post will give you examples of how to manage the copyrights in your podcast much more easily!

As you must have guessed… you can’t integrate just anything into your podcast! But hey, tell yourself that it’s a blessing in disguise, because it also protects your podcast from being misused by others! 

There are a few ways that you can ensure your podcast doesn’t fall victim to issues with copyrights.

X things you need to know about podcast copyright rules

• Create your own content
• Ask others for help with your copyrights
• Borrowing other’s work
• Special cases for copyrights
• Moral rights

Create your own content

Now this may seem obvious, but if you’re worried about running into problems with copyrights, only distribute content that is 100% yours. ✏️ 

Because, of course, you have the right to distribute your own content as much as you want, since the entire work belongs to you. 

So if you compose and record your own music, jingles, and podcast sound effects you have nothing to worry about! 🎼 

Same goes if you never add any excerpts that were created by others… no need to worry! 

via GIPHY

Ask others for help with your copyrights

Since it can be a lot of work and take a lot of time to create everything yourself from scratch, you can ask others for help! 🙋‍♀️ 

This can include your friends, content creators, or other podcasters. 

For example, for your podcast cover, maybe you could ask your incredibly talented sister to make it for you! 🖼️ 

Or for the music for your credits, maybe you have a talented colleague you could ask for help! 🎶 

Just make sure that whoever you ask, they sign a paper giving up the rights to the work that they created. 

You may think that this is strange, but it also protects your podcast… 

Imagine that years later your colleague changed his mind and decided that he didn’t want you to use his music anymore for your podcast credits. 

Well, you would have to change all your episodes… What a headache! 🤯 

This is also true for interviews. 🎙️ 

If you conduct interviews in your studio or in the street, you have to ask those that you interview to give up their rights to the content. 

Otherwise, if they decide to have their voices removed from your show, it could cause real problems for you and your podcast. 

Borrowing other’s work

Now that we’ve seen how it works when you use 100% original content, from you or those that you know, let’s take a look at what to do if you want to borrow work or parts of a work from others. 

Let’s say you want to use the new Taylor Swift song for your podcast credits music. 

Well good luck with that… you’ll need to contact Taylor Swift and her producer, and basically anyone else who owns any rights to the song to ask for permission. 

And unless you have Taylor Swift on speed dial, which I’m guessing you don’t, this can be a long and difficult process. 😱 

And even if you do manage to get a hold of everyone involved, and get their permission, you’ll most likely have to pay royalties on the music, which let’s just say isn’t cheap! 💰 

So, long story short, I don’t recommend this option for you, but if you happen to know Taylor personally, go for it! 

But if not, you can have a look at royalty-free sound banks which include productions under the Creative Commons License. 

In general, with these types of productions, you can use the content freely as long as you cite the author in your podcast description. 

You can also look for content that has the “Podsafe” mention, meaning that you will have no problem adding that piece of content to your show! 👍 

You can also use paid content banks which provide music and sound effects to dress up your podcast. 

We use it for some of our podcasts here at Ausha! 💜 

There are many platforms that exist for this, such as Epidemic Sound or Artlist. 

And they really do make life easier to be able to create content that has music and effects, without being afraid of having copyright problems. 

Special cases for copyrights 💼 🧳

There are two cases in which it’s not a problem for you to use content that you don’t have the rights for: 

The Exception of Short Quotation

The first is what’s called “The Exception of Short Quotation”. 

This means that if you use content to illustrate the point of something (so not in your credits for example), then you can use an extract from a film or song that lasts a few seconds. 

Be sure not to abuse this though, it really means only a few seconds, let’s say less than 10. 

When a work ends up in the public domain

The second case is when a work ends up in the public domain after a certain amount of time. ⌛ 

Just so you know, 70 years after the death of an author, their work ends up in the public domain. 

Then you can use it freely, but you still have to consider all the rights holders. 

For example, Chopin died in 1849 so you can use his nocturnes in your podcast, but the performers and producers of the versions that you find online still have the rights to their recordings. 

Therefore, you’ll need to ask them for the rights to use their recordings… or head over to the piano and see what you can do… 🎹 

via GIPHY

Moral rights

There are three concrete constraints to respect when you use someone else’s work in your podcast. 

The authorship of the work: 🖊️

If you use royalty-free work you still need to mention the name of the author and the title of the work in your description. 

The right of first disclosure: 👆

The author of a work has the prerogative of first broadcast. 

Meaning that if your friend composed your credits, they have the right to demand its first broadcast. 

The right to respect the integrity of the work:

You must not modify the work that you want to use. 🚫 

If you have the rights to that Taylor Swift song, you can’t remix it with you playing the bagpipes, for example! 

Conclusion

There can be a lot of different rules to follow when it comes to copyrights and your podcast!

So we hope that this blog post has helped you figure out what you need to know! 🤓