Legal Question in Business Law in California

Re: Rights to songs

If someone else wrote it and it has been copyrighted (which us usual for published songs of the last 50 years or so), there are two possibilities:

(1) Permission of the copyright owner; or

(2) "Fair use," generally meaning that you are not depriving the copyright owner of sales or other revenue or otherwise harming the owner's interests. Public performances and broadcasting usually aren't fair use. If you want a flavor of what may be fair use and what probably isn't, go to Google and use the search terms "fair use" and "song" and at least glance at the first 20 or 30 articles that come up. Pay particular attention to the fair use commentary on the Copyright Office official web site.