It never ceases to amaze me how many people are completely ignorant of what music copyright is all about and how high the risk of ignoring the guidelines associated with it could be. Music licensing is, at least in simple terms, the authorized use of any kind of tracks that you have legitimate copyright on them.
So why do we have music licenses? Well, the real reason for this is that musicians and lyricists need to have a powerful layer of protection covering their works, otherwise they wouldn’t produce them to begin with. If you’ve made an exceptional masterpiece, you probably need some form of defense against people stealing it or claiming it’s your own creation. This particular defense is generated by the various audio licensing methods, and legislations make it easy, therefore you can take someone to court for violating your own copyright.
For example, Philips recently launched an aggressive marketing strategy. The campaign includes a respectable Beatles tune as its theme song. It has been said that Philips actually paid a whopping one million dollars for the legal rights to make use of this track within its marketing plan. That really shows the power of audio licensing within the corporate arena. Most people also cannot fully understand the wide scope of audio copyright in the United States. For example, many people don’t know how tracks played on radio stations, in TV commercials, in podcasts, in movies, and even in bars will have a strong license.
To get a crystal clear understanding of the extent to which current music copyright schemes in the US and other countries block the interests of music providers, here are some important principles to keep in mind:
The law allows you to own rights to particular sounds, verses, and notes in a piece of music. The legal rights to any or even all of these items will be yours if they are unique and you are the original composer. You should also keep in mind that being the inventor simply gives you the right to the tunes; however, for these legal rights to be enforceable in a court of law, you will need to register with your local copyright clinic, something many artists fail to do.
Licensing regulations have a totally different process on the subject of commercialized tracks. In this case, it is an actual song, not its sounds, lyrics or notes, that is examined in the certification phase. There are some concerned parties regarding these types of songs. The people involved include the record label, artist, musician, and songwriter.
The record label would own the rights to the actual sound recording of the song, the songwriter and verse writer would own the legal rights to the song, the publisher would legally represent the songwriter and songwriter in all business matters related to the piece of music.
That’s the basic setup in relation to a commercial tune. On the other hand, it is quite possible for any given record company to have slight variations depending on the details of the legal agreements it has with its vocalists and songwriters. In addition, there are other licensing styles available through which companies can purchase the rights to music royalty-free, allowing them to use the music in relative peace of mind without any kind of “needle drop” fee. It’s important to remember that royalty-free and copyright-free music are two completely different things. Royalty-free music does not have rights of any kind, since the artist waives them when creating or composing a track.
Radio channels and bars wishing to use tunes must obtain public performance privileges from the appropriate authorities. In North America, those relevant bodies are the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers and the organization Broadcast Music Incorporated.
These organizations issue general certificates to diners and broadcast channels to use almost any audio they want. The revenue provided by those payments is then divided up among the music rights holders in the country.
It goes without saying that broadcasters and production companies need to be very careful when selecting tracks for movies or community performances. Podcasts are certainly one area where many people have made a business mistake by simply failing to make some general checks on the law and how it relates to the use of particular musical arrangements.
