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Originally Posted by raveneye
I'm a professional musician, and in general I personally would not allow someone to make copies of my performances and make those copies available to the public, unless I was involved in the production of those CDs and received some percentage of the income.
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Absolutely you could be sued for this, and you would lose the suit. This happens all the time. My advice would be to get written permission from the musicians and work out some fair monetary arrangement. How much they get would depend on how much work the church does in promoting the CDs. If the church does no promotion and simply puts them on a table, then a 50/50 split would be fair.
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50/50? That seems extremely high. I think we can be pretty sure that when the New York Philharmonic (to use an example) records a symphony, the orchestra does not get 50% of the profits (and certainly not 50% of the income, as you mentioned above). I doubt they get anything at all beyond their base salary.
Maybe a soloist would get a percentage off the profits, but certainly not the other members of the orchestra.
You may have a different image of what is going on here. We are talking about a small group of musicians hired to play for a night. No soloists, no featured performers (other than perhaps the organist, but he's a whole different story), not a professional troupe or band.
Do you really think they expect a cut of profits? Or, to put it more bluntly, if the organizers explained what they were planning to do and asked them to sign a waiver of future interest in the recording or profits from sales, would they refuse to sign?
Sorry for seeming incredulous, but I think you are envisioning a different scenario.