Increasingly all our events are ending up online in one form or another.   Here is a good article by John Foster that discusses your copyright obligations.  John is a lawyer specializing in music licensing and discusses how to get permission to use copyrighted music.

For our part, we always use royalty-free music in our webcasts and recordings, but that is not always the case for our client presentations.

So in a nutshell:

• Search ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC to see if anyone holds the copyright. These organizations represent over 95% of all songs ever written, including foreign songs. You can search by song title or performer.
• Then follow the instructions at the site and pay your license fee. Fees for a copyright song range from $80 to $6,450 per event.

For more details, please read John Foster’s article or consult your own lawyer!

Related posts:

1. Tips on Gaining Exposure through Bloggers
2. Event Recording Tip #1