We’re getting swamped with requests for advice on how best to share recordings of Christmas video performances with parents, since Covid restrictions have put a stop to live audiences in most countries around the world. But before we get to our recommendations on distribution, let’s first look at some of the practical and legal issues around recording or streaming your performance.
BEFORE YOU SHARE YOUR RECORDING
ORDER YOUR LICENCES
If you are planning to video record or live stream your Christmas performance, (which uses any element of any Learn2soar publication) then you will need to consider ordering TWO different licences from us:
1. ‘Performance Licence’: For any performance to take place of any of our publications (no matter how little is used), a Learn2soar ‘Performance Licence’ (or, up to date subscription) needs to be in place. To clarify, an up-to-date ‘Performance Licence’ is always required for any performance, no matter how old the performers are, whether it’s ‘just for parents’ or not, whether admission is charged or not, and even if it’s a virtual performance with an audience watching remotely via computers.
2. ‘Recording Rights Licence’: Depending on how many users are viewing your recording, you may also require a ‘Recording Rights Licence’. If it’s going to be less than 50 families watching, and you’re not making any charge, then currently you don’t have to purchase a ‘Recording Rights Licence’ from us. However, if your intended usage is going to be above these levels, then you will need to order a ‘Recording Rights Licence’. For more information, please visit our ‘Recording Licence’ page.
PASSWORD PROTECTION
Apart from ensuring that you are correctly licensed, the only other strict rule we have is that any online pre-recorded video or live-stream needs to be password protected in some way, so that it can only be viewed by your intended audience and isn’t accidentally made available for anyone in the world to view it. We insist on this for various reasons to do with child protection, copyright protection and to ensure that you don’t end up paying far more for your licence than you need to.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Having said that, we do make a minor exception for social media. Very short clips of your performance are allowed on social media, or on your establishment’s own website, in a non-profit making capacity. Any short clip must be no more than one minute in length and must also be no more than 50% of any one song, and with no more than 4 clips posted in total. Please ensure you have parent/guardian permission for every child that is featured in the video – and please do tag us in!
SHARING YOUR VIDEO OR LIVE STREAM
SHARING ON YOUR OWN WEBSITE
Most organisations are simply adding a password protected page to their own websites and posting their videos there, then handing out the password/log-in details to parents/carers. As long as you have access to your website’s admin area which allows you to edit the website, then there should be an option to create a new webpage – and within the settings for that new page there’s usually an option to password protect it. Hopefully, you’ll also have the option to upload a video to be displayed on that page only.
It’s usually a fairly simple process, but if you’re stuck, or not sure where to start, then the company that manages your organisation’s website will probably give you some specific advice, or possibly even do it for you. However, if they try to charge you a lot extra for providing this service, or if things get too complicated, then please let us know as we can host your video on a private page on this blog site for a lot less.
Password protecting a video isn’t possible in Facebook, though we do allow you to share very short clips on social media (see above section for details). The best you can do on Facebook is limit your video views to ‘friends only’ (which still isn’t that secure) and if you have hundreds of Facebook friends who could all potentially view it, then your recording licence is going to cost a lot more than it would for just fifty users for instance.
YOUTUBE
Similarly, we’d really like to recommend YouTube, but unfortunately you can’t password protect videos with them anymore. YouTube do have a ‘private video’ setting which you’re welcome to try, but it’s very complicated, hard to access and cumbersome, in that it requires you to manually type in the email address of everyone you want to send the video link to.
VIMEO
A far simpler alternative to YouTube is ‘Vimeo’. With Vimeo you can easily password protect videos, but only with their paid plans, with the lowest level coming in at £72 a year, or £10 a month. However, they have a 30 day ‘risk-free’ trial, so you could make the video live for 29 days – enough time for all your parents to see it, and then cancel the plan and delete the video before any charges are incurred. Here is a link to the Vimeo website.
LEARN2SOAR HOSTING
Finally, if all else fails, we can host your video on this website, via a password protected, bespoke webpage. Your video would be accessible on any device and would be securely hosted in such a way that it wouldn’t be able to be copied or downloaded without permission. The total charge for this service is usually around £50 and depends on the amount of families that you think will be watching. This would be a one-off charge to have your video live for 3 months.
On top of this, we have had requests from some schools who are planning on using us for video hosting, to allow their parents to download the video for a one-off charge in order to raise a bit of money for school funds. While this is something we can easily do, it is brand new territory for us (as most things this year have been) and as such, we’re still exploring the costs and legalities around any such service. But we’ll gladly discuss all possible service options with you and share some demonstration pages with you. Please email us for further details.
We trust that all the information in this blog post has been of some help to you. Please let us know if you require any further assistance, or if you’d like us to host your video for you. We wish you every success for your performance.