How does music licencing work?

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Tornado

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I was listening to the recent David Gilmour album Live In Gdańsk, and I heard Comfortably Numb. Now, I'm no expert on these sorts of things, but I thought that Roger Waters owned the rights to all of the songs from The Wall rather than Pink Floyd as an entity.
I guess this also applies to other controversial tours, like the "Sans Halen" tour from a couple of years ago. So I was wondering how musicians from bands licence music to do on solo tours.
 
From what I understand as far as live music goes, as long as the show isn't being recorded to sell at a later date, you can play whatever you want. Otherwise you have to pay royalty fees to the record company/artist that the copyrighted material you are playing belings to.
 
I'm sure David Gilmour can play Comfortably Numb with no issues as he co-wrote it with Waters.
 
CDailey
From what I understand as far as live music goes, as long as the show isn't being recorded to sell at a later date, you can play whatever you want. Otherwise you have to pay royalty fees to the record company/artist that the copyrighted material you are playing belings to.
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Unless, of course, you charged money for admission to the performance, which makes it for profit. It doesn't matter if you sell the performance at a later date or the current date, you're selling it, and you can't do that with other people's work without prior arrangement and permission.
 
I've wondered this too, since plenty of artists sing other recording artists' work in live performances. Perhaps one-off performances are okay, but repeatedly doing so is a copyright violation.

I recall at the end of Pearl Jam shows, they finish off with a classic that belonged to someone else.
 
As it worked for me as a working musician, the owner of the club had to pay the royalties owed for the performance of other artists songs. Don't pay, and the union would ride you ass or pressure the music companies to sue.

However, contracts with promoters or club owners would shift the responsibility to the band. Whatever the arrangement, somebody has to pay.

With a band like Pink Floyd, somebody would be responsible for payments for the songs played in concert so all members, past or present, could get their royalties.

At least that's how I think it works. Not 100% sure.
 

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