I regularly recommend to my funeral home clients that they invest in proper music systems (MP3 players, good speaker systems, etc.) and yet I don’t know much about the legality of music played in the funeral home as it relates to copyright infringement.

As I understand it (and here’s the disclaimer that I’m not a lawyer, am not offering legal advice and will NOT claim expert status in any court) music licensing fees apply when you use music to sell a product or you sell the music itself. 

Does this mean that you wouldn’t pay a fee for music played in the background during a visitation, but you would for a song sung at the service by a paid singer?  Or should the singer pay copyright fees to the musician?  Does the fee go to the musician who popularized the song or to the writer?

It’s very confusing, to say the least.

But now funeral home owners can indemnify themselves with a yearly music license.

ICCFA (they just added the second C to become “International Cemetery, CREMATION and Funeral Association) offers one for just $232.

You can see the full list of their Frequently Asked Questions here.

I’ve heard the questions and I can imagine that you have them too.  Namely, WHY DO I NEED A LICENSE?

I would suggest that a music license is much like a catastrophic insurance policy.  The odds that you’ll ever have to consult the policy (license) or use it are pretty slim.  But we’ve all heard the stories of parents being sued by the music industry because their kid downloaded songs illegally.  We’ve read the accounts of businesses losing business, time and cash to fight a legal battle against superfluous charges.

So I say get the license.  Maybe not from ICCFA, if you’d rather go through another trade organization.  But for $232, the amount of profit you make off even the cheapest pine box, you can idemnify yourself for the whole year.