copyright music
How much of a song&#39;s audio can I include in teaching materials without copyright violation?
<p>I would like to build some educational material that would incorporate music. </p>

<p>Is it possible to include short sections of musical works without violating copyright? How much of the song would be "too much"?</p>

<p>Probably not. Bare "educational purposes" is not a factor that weighs in favor of <a href="https://law.stackexchange.com/tags/fair-use/info">fair use</a> – it has to be non-profit (not in a for-profit web-page or publication). There being a real marked for licensing music rights, circumventing (paid) permission on the grounds that it's "fair use" would have a non-trivial effect on market. If you just rip a CD and put a piece of it on a web page or copy from sheet music, you fail the transformativeness test. It's not clear what amount is "substantial" copying in music, but possibly on the order of 10 seconds worth. There is a short music case summary <a href="https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/cases/#music_cases" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a>, and you can check the copyright office's case law index <a href="https://copyright.gov/fair-use/fair-index.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a>. Most likely, you would need to hire an attorney to study the specific circumstances.</p>
