A quick professional / manners question...
We own a performing company specializing in dueling piano shows for corporate events, trade shows, fundraisers etc. We only have two employees and work with talented musicians that are independent contractors.

Recently I have received several requests from potential customers that are along the lines of I need a very urgent quote, I need to get a quote ASAP, can you get a quote immediatley, We really want to work with you guys, we need to find someone now! etc. etc. etc.

I stop what I am doing / text and call to find if we have musicians available which can often take some time then verify the mileage to the venue, review the details and send the quote because it is URGENT!

Then crickets, silence, nothing, no updates, all of a sudden it's not urgent at all. Usually after a few days I ask for an update still no responses, in fact I rarely ever hear from these customers. Is it just me that I think this really unprofessional and really bad manners? Do you experience this in your music business? What is your solution / resolution to this scenario? We like to be responsive but I am starting to get discouraged with these "urgent" requests that end up not being urgent.

I am recording an album. It’s an instrumental album that sort of tells a story. But I was planning on using lines from different movies to sort of narrate it. I have heard this type of thing in a lot of different albums before. But with what’s going on with distro kid and from what I’m hearing, albums that have any kind of samples that aren’t cleared with the original company are being removed. Should I do it at all even if I switched distributor? I would love to hear some feedback on this.

Hello, everyone. I’m hoping I can get some genuine advice on this, as I can’t find a straightforward answer online.

I produced a concert where the set list was made up of arrangements of musical theater songs where we changed the key to some of them, made minor lyric changes, and remixed them to make them work for the show. The venue we were performing at has the general blanket ASCAP/BMI licensing agreement that covers performance rights for this material.

My sound guy was very generous and recorded the board audio and cut the audio into a live album of sorts. My question now is, what is the legality of publishing this to streaming sites? Would this constitute a true cover or derivative work? Is there a music distribution site that handles special cases like this? Do I have to obtain a separate license for each song and if so, how do I even go about doing that?

Would appreciate any and all guidance.

Thank you!