In order to use "Otherside" we need to get permission from Perfume Genius's record label, unless of course, we want to get in a legal battle with them that we are sure to lose.
Finding out the record label for the album that "Otherside" was a part of was no easy task. Finally we had to resort to going into Abdullah's iTunes library and looking at the metadata for one of the tracks off that album.
According to the metadata, Perfume Genius is signed to Matador Records. We found this form on their website, detailing the information they require for permission to use Matador content for student projects. However, the terms “film”, “scene”, “length of song use” and “University” sort of made it clear that this form was intended for college students intending to use Matador material in independent film soundtracks.
For our needs, we thought it best to email Matador directly with the request. The website lists Miwa Okumura as the Senior VP for West Coast Operations and Licensing for Beggars Group (which owns Matador), and redirects to her for licensing requests. We needed some help with drafting the letter, and found some guidelines at the following page at chron.com:
To sum it up, it outlines the process in five stages. Firstly, identifying the owner (check), then in the letter: describing the usage, asking for an agreement (in this case, a letter specifying that we may use the song), negotiating the fee (we can skip this step, as the article, as well as Matador’s form, says that this is usually unnecessary when the usage won’t be earning the users anything, and we’re so not earning anything), and finally closing the letter with some pleasantries.
Here’s what we came up with:
We have emailed this to Matador and hopefully will receive our reply soon.
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