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Writer's pictureShreepal "Shreeps" J. Zala

The Music Copyrights Puzzle: A Simple Guide for Confused Artists

Updated: Oct 21


Many young musicians buy a copy of Donald Passman’s “All You Need To Know About The Music Business” and quickly read through the section on music copyrights.  For a few brief hours or days, they feel like they’ve got a good grasp of how music copyrights work, only to have someone ask them to explain it. They then scramble through an explanation like a poorly practiced solo.  No reason to feel ashamed, you’re not alone!  Even seasoned professionals often struggle with understanding music copyrights. While most explanations get the details right, they don’t explain it in a way that the average musician (or even non-musician) would understand.  It’s not rocket science, but it’s not elementary either. In this musical copyrights guide,  I'm going to cover the two main types of music copyrights as simple and effectively as I can and also include why people get so confused.  Throughout I’ll give you tips to help to keep it right longer into the future.  If you hit a forgetting curve down the road, you can always find your way back to this article. Music copyrights are like a puzzle where the hardest part is not confusing the pieces with each other.  After that, the puzzle is actually fairly easy to solve.

 

What is a Copyright?

A copyright is the right to reproduce, change, perform, or sell an original work of art.  That’s the simple explanation.  Without owning the copyright in a work, you’re not legally allowed to do any of these.  It’s a way that the law protects your art and excludes others from profiting off of it without your permission.

 

What is a Dual Copyright?

For most works of art, there is one copyright that gives you the rights mentioned above.  But for musical works  – in particular music recordings – there are actually two types of copyrights.  This is known as a dual copyright.  This means there are two copyrights that exist at the same time in one single work.  For dual copyrights, the two copyrights protect different parts of the work.  You should continue to think of these copyrights as separate for clarity.  Each of the two copyrights affords the same rights above, but with respect to two different parts of the work.

 

What are the Two Types of Musical Copyrights?

For musical recordings, there is one copyright that protects music & lyrics and a separate copyright that protects the recorded audio of the work.  You should think of the music & lyrics copyright as the music composition copyright and the recorded audio copyright as the sound recording copyright.  So there's one copyright for the musical composition and another for the sound recording.  Again you should keep these two separate in your mind when thinking about them.


Tip: If there’s no recording, there’s no dual copyright. Just the music composition copyright.

 

What Do I Need to Know About the Music Composition Copyright?

The music composition copyright protects the music and lyrics of the musical work.  The music & lyrics together are often referred to as the “song”.  The “lyrics” are the written words and the “music” is the unique chord changes and rhythm of the song.  Think of this as the first copyright.  Without the music composition, there can be no second copyright in the audio recording of the song.  This copyright also protects the work no matter what type of format the song is in – audio, written or performed live.  This is a key difference from the sound recording copyright which only protects the recorded audio. You can think of the music composition as the non-recorded copyright.


Tip: If you’re a music producer, creating a beat is the same as creating a song.

 

Who Owns the Music Composition Copyright?

The initial owner of the music composition copyright is the person (or persons) who compose the music and lyrics.  A single songwriter is easy enough; he or she owns all of the musical composition copyright.  You’ll also hear people refer to this as “owning the song”.   If multiple people co-write the music and lyrics together, the musical composition copyright ownership would be split equally amongst them by default.  In actuality, the song ownership is often split amongst the writers depending on what the writers mutually agree upon.  So one primary songwriting bandmate might own half the song, while the other half is split amongst the three other bandmates who often contribute less.  The breakdown of copyright ownership percentages is referred to as “splits” and documented by the writers on a split sheet or via the musical composition copyright registration form (PA Form) with the U.S. Copyright Office. If there's no information about ownership splits, then as I mentioned the music composition (song) copyright will be divided equally be default.


Tip: If someone says they “own the song”, they mean the musical composition copyright.

 

What Confuses People About The Music Composition Copyright?

For starters, people naturally think of music and lyrics as separate things.  A few ways around this are to visualize the song as one piece of sheet music or as a one coin with a lyric side and chart side.  Just remember to think of music & lyrics as parts of a whole for the sake of the musical composition copyright.


What’s probably most confusing though is that the music industry, your bandmates, your music teacher, your musician uncle, and others will all refer to the musical composition using a different term.  Every person seems to have their preferred terminology not to mention some people will be confusing the two different copyrights as well.  For the musical composition copyright, some of these terms include the musical work copyright, the songwriting copyright, the song ownership, performance copyrights, mechanical copyrights, and PA copyrights (referring to the PA copyright registration form). The terms “performance copyright” and “mechanical copyrights” aren’t even technically correct because they refer to sub-types of the music composition copyright and not the actual music composition copyright as a whole.  The word “mechanical” might be the biggest trap because it sounds like it would be related to physical albums and the sound recording copyright, but it’s actually related to the music composition copyright.


Tip: Until you’ve got it down, stick with music composition or composition copyright.

 

What Do I Need To Know About the Sound Recording Copyright?

Every specific music recording has its own sound recording copyright.  If twenty different artists record twenty separate cover versions of “Yesterday” by The Beatles, each version has its own distinct sound recording copyright.  Each of those twenty sound recording copyrights would theoretically belong to twenty different owners as well.  But while there’s twenty separate sound recording copyrights, there's still only one musical composition copyright that belongs to the music & lyrics writers, John Lennon & Paul McCartney.  This concept is an important one in understanding the difference between the two types of music copyrights. 


Another helpful tip is to think of the sound recording copyright chronologically as the second copyright. If there’s no music composition, there's no audio recording of that music.  The sound recording copyright applies to the recorded audio version of the song created after the music composition. (We'll exclude the rare simultaneous composition-recording).


Tip: Remember every separate audio recording has its own sound recording copyright!

 

What’s Confusing About the Sound Recording Copyright?

Probably that everything about music copyrights feels so nebulous and iffy!  By this point, it can feel like throwing darts in the dark, so let’s make effort to keep it simple.  The sound recording copyright is strictly for the sound recording and nothing else.  And every different or separate musical recording will have its own sound recording copyright – even of the same song. Though we're usually only concerned with the final recorded version, every demo version or recorded take has its own sound recording copyright as well.


Another confusion is that people refer to the sound recording copyright by different names, just like the music composition copyright and again, sometimes they're mixing up the two types of copyrights.  Since the final sound recording from studio sessions is referred to as the “master”, the sound recording copyright is often referred to as the master copyright, the master recording copyright, or the SR copyright (referencing the SR copyright registration form).  For a music album or music catalog, the collection of separate sound recording copyrights for each album song is collectively referred to as “the masters”.  Also, as I mentioned earlier, remember the word “mechanical” is not related to the sound recording copyright. It's a bit easier than the music composition copyright, but I'd still recommend referring to this copyright by the term "sound recording copyright" until you've got it down.


Tip: The terms “master” or “master recording” are synonyms for final sound recording.

 

Who Owns the Sound Recording Copyright?

In conventional record deals, the sound recording copyright is owned by the record label or the business entity the owns the label.  This is an expectation they contract for funding the recording sessions that produce the sound recording (or master).  Being the initial owners of the final album recordings (or masters), they're the owners of the sound recording copyright in each of those individual song recordings.  The sound recording copyrights can change hands over time if the record label chooses to sell or transfer them which is not uncommon. If an artist makes his own record, he would also own the sound recording copyrights in those recordings which is known as “owning your own masters”.

 

Conclusion

I discussed two types of music copyrights, what they protect, and where you’re most likely to get confused.  Like most learning, review is an important part of memorization so if you get confused at any point, I'd encourage you revisit this article and perhaps bookmark it as a resource. 

I hope I demystified some of what makes this confusing and that you also take some of these tips with you next time you think about music copyrights. If you want to learn more about copyrights in genera, see our blog post First Things First: What's a Copyright? In the meantime, I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Leave them in the comments here or send me an email at info@zalalaw.com.

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