A thief is a thief. If you want people to hear you play covers, play out. 
Links to cover versions may cause legal issues for Steinberg. You canât blame them for removing such posts. Generally it seems that the music industry is undergoing major paradigm shifts. The distribution side has gone from âhardwareâ (LPâs & CDâs) to software (downloads). Costs for producing have dropped dramatically.
Therefore the music industry (aka the content mafia) is trying hard to keep up with making the same profits as the used to do. They used to promote talent and now they are trying to create talent (all these fracking made up stars and bands in reality TV shows).
I do not know where this going to end, for the time being I going to buy âhardwareâ whenever I like the tune (ok, I commit I do buy âsoftwareâ music too).
Ok, sorry this was off topic, but I guess it fits into the picture. Bottom line, in private you can whistle any tune you like, in the outside world for now, you need to care about copy rights and similar infringements.
Cheers,
BxSj
PS.: Did we lose a grand senior member here?
I agree itâs a bit difficult, I personally donât mind covers either. But I can understand that no hosting site wants to get their hands dirty, they can be held responsible for copyright infringement if the original author has problems with a particular cover.
And we seem to have lost our only grand senior member indeed.
There is no problem recording covers, the problem comes from letting other people hear them. I get hounded by the PRS every year because if I have a radio playing or CD or whatever that the public can hear they want me to by a licence. I keep telling them Iâm a Recording Studio and donât have radios etc on and they go away again for a year.
Almost as bad as the TV licencing people 
Even Taxi drivers are supposed to get a licence if they have a radio on that the passengers can hear.
If you post to your own web page then the risk becomes yours (I Guess) as you would probably of agreed to some sort of legal bumf pertaining to content when getting your hosting setup.
In the UK if you want to have a CD made with cover music on it you have to obtain a licence before the CD plant will press them. I canât see this being any different to any other form of distribution!
If you want to be safe, donât upload it to any place accessible to general public. If you want to share it with your friends, upload it to the site protected with password.
poor muttenhead, reduced to a guest joke 
I always wondered what the problem was if no money changes hands and its not used in any commercial way etc, all in fun and entertainment. myself I could never play copy tunes because I canât figure out the chords
In my opinion, everyone who prectises name calling here, should be downgraded to guest, but thatâs just my opinion.
I may have no problem, if someone covers my songs without permission for non-commercial use, you may not have problem with your songs either. But some other people may. They own their music. They have every right to control it the way they want.
You can purchase a digital distribution license and gain the right to publish licensed cover tunes.
These folks will help you ⌠and kindly take your money for such license:
Even with such a license in place, you still wonât be allowed to post the links here. I donât blame Steinberg for that. I wouldnât want to have to police whether folks had such licenses or not. It would cost time and money to administer.
then by all means control it, everyone knows what the internet is, so youâre your own liquor control board. you have every right to put up 30 sec demoâs or however you want to control it.
if you leave your car doors open in the grocery store parking lot, whoâs fault is it if it gets stolen.
Itâs foolish to put ones property at risk. Without getting mired in the vagaries of contributory negligence, itâs the fault of the car thief for stealing.
So you think itâs ok to steal if you can? Interesting point of view.
I donât totally agree with Nateâs opinions on covering a song but in legal terms, itâs 100% accurate hence Steinbergâs policy. On the other hand, it can be very useful for ones self-improvement both in playing the song in the first place and then mixing it to a, hopefully, high standard. Most folk on this forum are learning the trade and, as far as Iâm aware, ainât making money from somebody elseâs work. So Iâm for and against it
Bottom line, if you do a cover, host it yourself and take your chances with the suits.
I posted a cover (Chinese) here once.
I paid for a license which was easily done through:
Limelight
http://www.songclearance.com/
It was hosted on Soundclick in the âcoversâ category (where it sat at #1 for a week or so 
).
The mods here didnât seem to have an issue with it⌠?
I can. Maybe the composer of the song wrote it to make money by people buying the song. Now you go and share the song for free. This may reduce his sales. Personally I donât think your cover version have any effect on his sales, but the line has be drawn somewhere.
Now letâs take another example: Iâll take my Cubase. Strip audio engine out of itâs code and write a new user-interface for this audio-engine: I just made a âcover versionâ of Cubase. Now, do you think I should be allowed to make my âcover versionâ freely available as a donwload. Hey! I have no intentions to make any profit. So it must be ok? Right?
Itâs all to do with Mechanical Copyright> Mechanical license - Wikipedia
Most (not all) artists sign up and allow you to do your own version of their work, regardless of how one thinks it should work this is the way it actually works and is law in most countries.
not at all, people donât even tag their mp3âs properly and youâre talking about controlling ones music. you canât have it both ways, youâre either controlling it or youâre not, are you?
maybe so, but that doesnât take the oness off people to protect their belongings. being lazy or forgetful is no excuse, lots of people like to blame the world for their own faults. when you go to the insurance company to make your claim, theyâll laff at you and remind you of your own negligence.
So. If I donât put my name tag visible outside my car, you think itâäs public domain and you can take it?
Try to understand: if music is not explicitly tagged as public domain, itâs someoneâs property by default.
Same applies to my house, my computer, my studio gear, my car ⌠and my dog.
Maybe, but he uses quite strange analogies:
Locked/unlocked car: in digital music world analogy for that one is file with/without DRM. He makes it clear itâs composerâs/artistâs fault if music is redistributed without permission if itâs not DRMâed. Is this the world we want to go to?
Tagged/untagged MP3:s: the real world analogy is to put nametags to every posession you own. Is this the world we want to go to?
I leave my car unlocked all the time during the summer. Itâs too much hassle to put the roof back on every time I go to supermarket so itâs worthless to lock the doors, anyway. Fortunately criminals are still minority in my country. Yes and I used to have my doors unlocked until my ex-girlfriend/business partner started to send some junkies to my home to beat me up.