Opinions on Selling UTAU-related Stuff?

[Arissa]

I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice. My experience and education regards IP law in USA.

Once a voicebank is made available for public use, selling a recorded song that uses it is as free as playing any other musical instrument. The reason is because the musical content only concerns the samples in the voicebank. This regards the copyright on a sound recording.

The rub is that using the voice in the recording is not the same as using the character's name in a title or a visual likeness, which have both printed copyright and trademark scope.

Most of you understand that it is okay to put a price tag on anything that is your original creation. Personally, I find the moment I put a price tag on my music, people stop being interested in it, but it's not a total loss and it's not like that for everyone.

In the US, with regard to the copyright on a musical composition, the composer has the right of first release, that is, to determine who is allowed to share the first recording of your song with the world, and yes, putting your song demo on SoundCloud satisfies this. After the first release, the compulsory license clause grants anyone the right to sell a recording or a cover version of your song as long as the composer is paid the statutory royalty rate. Like the fair use clause, I am of the impression that most countries do NOT follow this doctrine. This also only regards a song used in sound recordings, when using the music with video or in a video game, it is handled through a sync license which the composer will always control.
The compulsory license does not allow use of the contents of the recording, it assumes you are making all of the composition's sounds again from scratch. Using the same recording of music as before is considered a sample, which is a license to the sound recording, but not the composition of the song.

If you didn't understand why it took forever for Project Diva to go around the world, you probably do now, because Sega needed permission to:

• The recordings of many songs
• License to the compositions too
• A license to the visual likeness of the characters
• A license to the trademark of the charters' names
• In some cases, license to the performing artist and composer's names too
• all licenses with no time limit so the game can stay on the shelf in a store forever
• and repeat with respects to laws of all of the countries where the game is sold
• probably something else I'm forgetting too

Because all of these rights have a relationship, it is easy to mix them up.

That raises a question I heard of before. People were curious about if utau can be taken seriously in a legal sense, like if someone stole a voicebank and claimed it as their own, would there be any legal action involved? Would legal action be possible? I'm pretty sure that it's a big no-no as far as trying to steal a vocaloid is concerned, but with utau I'm not sure of what would be done and what could be done.

 

[Nohkara]

I definitely want to buy some stickers, (post) cards, posters, magnets, pins, keychain (maybe an album) etc of my favorite UTAU!

Selling a little UTAU goodies won't be never your main income but I think that buying a little thing, you can show some support to that UTAU and/or goodie's maker.

Of course, you need to be GOOD at what you're selling and used at least ok known UTAU in your work, so that some people want to buy it! (none would buy a goodie where's quality of material is poor and selling newcomer UTAU is hyper hard).

It sometimes makes me sad that there's no much any doujin works sold in Overseas: I wish that there was more! (There's quite a lot doujin in Japanese but I think that many don't sell their works outside of events such as "UTAU square" and/or they do not ship their goodies overseas what makes me super sad TT)

Off topic but also an UTAU related event like "UTAU square" in Japan somewhere in overseas would be super cool even it was small (I know that it's really hard to arrange but still)

 

[Mougeki Mero]

Wow, a lot of japanese users sell buttons, posters and etc on Japan, either of their own UTAU or others (with permission ofc)! I dont see many of it on the overseas, but anyway, I think it is very cool!

Seconding @Pupuomena , there are UTAU events in Japan from time to time that is not only a meeting of users/voicers/managers but also an event to promote and sell goodies of UTAU (Albums, CDs, Goodies, Etc). I was planning to go to UTAU Square, but due to the language barrier I couldnt :/

Also, there is rarely any shipping

 

[chunter]

That raises a question I heard of before. People were curious about if utau can be taken seriously in a legal sense, like if someone stole a voicebank and claimed it as their own, would there be any legal action involved?

By letter of law, yes, the law is broken, but in reality, as a plaintiff you'd need a lawyer willing to take your case up front and cover the court costs for you, and you'd have a lot to lose if the litigation fails.

I'd say "what kind of a jerk does that anyway" but I already know this stuff has happened before.

For the record, I have some Momone Momo and 3-girls related stuff which was my reward for participating in Tricolored.