Is it necessary to audibly announce a copyright notice when using music licensed under Creative Commons Attribution?
<p>I would like to use music licensed under <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode" rel="noreferrer">Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0)</a> as on-hold music; however, the only way to provide attribution would be to announce a copyright notice prior to playing the song.  That's certainly do-able; however, I've never heard something like that, so that brings me to the question: is it necessary to announce a copyright notice for CC BY 3.0 licensed music when there is no other means of giving attribution?</p>

<p>For reference, the attribution requirement is stated in section 4(b), copied here for reference:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>If You Distribute, or Publicly Perform the Work or any Adaptations or
  Collections, You must, unless a request has been made pursuant to
  Section 4(a), keep intact all copyright notices for the Work and
  provide, reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing: (i) the
  name of the Original Author (or pseudonym, if applicable) if supplied,
  and/or if the Original Author and/or Licensor designate another party
  or parties (e.g., a sponsor institute, publishing entity, journal) for
  attribution ("Attribution Parties") in Licensor's copyright notice,
  terms of service or by other reasonable means, the name of such party
  or parties; (ii) the title of the Work if supplied; (iii) to the
  extent reasonably practicable, the URI, if any, that Licensor
  specifies to be associated with the Work, unless such URI does not
  refer to the copyright notice or licensing information for the Work;
  and (iv) , consistent with Section 3(b), in the case of an Adaptation,
  a credit identifying the use of the Work in the Adaptation (e.g.,
  "French translation of the Work by Original Author," or "Screenplay
  based on original Work by Original Author"). The credit required by
  this Section 4 (b) may be implemented in any reasonable manner;
  provided, however, that in the case of a Adaptation or Collection, at
  a minimum such credit will appear, if a credit for all contributing
  authors of the Adaptation or Collection appears, then as part of these
  credits and in a manner at least as prominent as the credits for the
  other contributing authors. For the avoidance of doubt, You may only
  use the credit required by this Section for the purpose of attribution
  in the manner set out above and, by exercising Your rights under this
  License, You may not implicitly or explicitly assert or imply any
  connection with, sponsorship or endorsement by the Original Author,
  Licensor and/or Attribution Parties, as appropriate, of You or Your
  use of the Work, without the separate, express prior written
  permission of the Original Author, Licensor and/or Attribution
  Parties.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>You have to give attribution by the terms of the license. If that is the only way then that is the way you must do it.</p>

<p>If you distribute music files in one of many standard formats, it is often possible to add text to the metadata of the music. I just opened a random song that I purchased in Apple's Music app, clicked on &quot;Info&quot;, then &quot;File&quot; and found under &quot;Copyright&quot; the text &quot;℗ Originally released 1965, 1967, 1969, 1970, 1971 SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT (P) 1975, 1978, 1990 SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT&quot;.</p>
<p>For sound recordings, you don't want to interfere with the enjoyment of the recording, while staying legal. For audiobooks, often with 20 or 50 chapters, you could add copyright and license information as the first or last chapter. Easy to skip because the listener doesn't want to hear it again and again. Same for collections of music. In a single song, you should try to get the required info into the file's metadata if at all possible.</p>

copyright creative-commons music attribution