Someone does own the rights. You have to pay them if you want to use their property. What's so difficult about that to understand?

The point made here "The singer, likely doesnt have the copyright", because usually it is the Record label that owns the copyright to the song, which means regardless of if the singer is in jail, dead or still touring / writing songs. The Record company owns those songs ... so you arent paying the artist, you are paying the company that owns them.. Even if the guy who sang the song is in jail... it doesnt impact the legal rights of the Company that owns the song, and they can and may indeed sue.. which is then just costly, so best to avoid by getting permission.

The point made here "The singer, likely doesnt have the copyright", because usually it is the Record label that owns the copyright to the song, which means regardless of if the singer is in jail, dead or still touring / writing songs. The Record company owns those songs ... so you arent paying the artist, you are paying the company that owns them.. Even if the guy who sang the song is in jail... it doesnt impact the legal rights of the Company that owns the song, and they can and may indeed sue.. which is then just costly, so best to avoid by getting permission.

But just to be clear, even if the singer did own their own copyrights, perhaps because they self-released the music, then those rights would still be theirs - being in prison doesn't automatically void all rights. It's certainly possible that some jurisdictions might revoke copyrights for prisoners, but I've never heard of one that does; not surprising given that copyright (or at least some hypothetical implementation of it) is covered in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 27.

Damn, your american laws are auful. Where is your spirit, where is callenge, where is "f@ck the system" things? Are you independent developers or not?... You piss me off, I'm disappointed.
I don't mean "steal my game" as stealing, I just can't find another word to explain my message, because English is not my 1st language.
Anyway, I understand, will keep it in mind.

This is not just the american copyright laws. This is covered by international copyright treaties and conventions, and is accorded by most of the countries in the world:

And this is a great and good thing for creators.

You could just wait. AFAIK 50 years after the recording music become public domain. Not sure about details and how this applies here.

You could just wait. AFAIK 50 years after the recording music become public domain. Not sure about details and how this applies here.

Noooooope. I'm actually not even sure what you're trying to say here. Copyright is life of the author +70 years or 120 years from creation for anonymous works. Generally. Very, very generally. Determining copyright duration is a legitimate exercise in extreme patience and anal retentiveness, but this may help.

http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm

Sorry - i'm no business / laws guy.

But i remember from working at a record company: If the recording was dated 50 years back my company legally sold CDs (e.g. Elvis Presley, Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra) without paying (any?) usual fees / licenses.

I don't know if that 'public domain' declartion covered anything involved (composition, lyrics, arrangements, musicans...).

Maybe reselling that music was just cheaper than usual but not completely free.

Maybe it covered only exceptions like live recordings or recordings not done by the original record company, dead Artists, my company was EU, or other special cases i'm not aware of.