Music Industry Law: Can I use a song cover off YouTube for a video advertisement?

You cannot use any copyrighted material for advertising purposes without acquiring a license from the copyright holder. If the person on Youtube is licensed for his/her performance, it does not transfer to anyone else who wishes to use it.

There are two parts to the song in this instance, that you'll need to understand in order to license it. You've got the song itself - the melody, chords, lyrics, tempo, etc. This is the property of the person, or people who who wrote it. In many cases, the songwriter will also give half the ownership of this to a publishing company - this doesn't have to be a record company. Then, there's the recording. The recording is owned by the person who paid for the recording in most cases. If it's on the radio, you could pretty safely assume a record label owns that particular recording. On youtube, it's exceedingly likely that that performance of the track is owned by the performer. You'll need to license that particular recording from the performer, but if they've used the Standard YouTube License, then you're fine to reuse it, so long as you give credit to it's author. As far as use in an advertisement, you're going to need to license the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronization_rights from the songwriter, and perhaps any publishing company with a stake in the song's copyright. Additional resource: [Some notes I made while reading https://bitly.com/Z07EMR]

You do need a license. You might need two, actually. I guess the  questions I have are: Are you planning on using a previously recorded cover by a band? Did they seek permission from the original artist/copyright holder to cover and sell the song? Are you making the cover yourself or recruiting someone else to do the cover? If you're using a cover from a band that already recorded the cover and got permission from the songwriter/copyright holder, you will only need to buy a sync license. If they didn't get permission from the original copyright holders, don't use it. If you're making the cover yourself, you will need a mechanical (compulsory) license first, and then a sync license. That should do it, but always be careful whenever you're recording a cover of a song and potentially making money off it. I always use this website whenever I need to purchase licenses for anything: https://www.harryfox.com/. There are a ton of other music licensing companies out there as well, such as Triple Scoop Music, Music Bed, and more. Hope this helps!

Get in contact with the artist and artist's management directly. (Actually both of the artists: the cover performer and the one who made the original.) If you know what label the original was released on, you could contact them as well. The easiest way to find thier contact info is to go onto their Facebook fan page and go to the about tab, then send emails about it to every email on there until you get a response.