Legal Question in Business Law in New York

Re: Using music in a video slideshow

You will need a licese whenever you use copyrighted, non-public domain music for your dvds, whether you charge your customers or not and regardless of where you procured the music cds from. There is a "rights clearance" process for this task if you want to avoid copyright infringement lawsuits but you should understand that you may not be able to obtain all rights you need for the price you can afford or at all. An alternative is to use original music by lesser-known artists or to have session musicians record covers of known compositions (there is a compulsory license for that).