All about - Music copyright. Music clearance, licensing, supervision.

All about - Music copyright. Music clearance, licensing, supervision, consultation.

The Copyright Act was amended in 1976 and took effect in 1978. Concerning the duration of copyright, different rules apply to works created on or after January 1, 1978; works created but not published or copyrighted on or before January 1, 1978; and works under copyright as of January 1, 1978.

Licensing Information
The Licensing Division in the Copyright Office administers the compulsory and statutory licenses in the Copyright Act (title 17 of the U.S. Code).

The following words and phrases will turn up regularly in any comprehensive discussion of music licensing, and are listed in no particular order:

license the right, granted by the copyright holder, for a given person or entity to broadcast, recreate, perform, or listen to a recorded copy of a copyrighted work
licensor the owner of the licensed work licensee the person or entity to whom the work is licensed.

What is Music Licensing? and supervision?
Music licensing is the process by which songwriters, in theory, get paid for their work. In much the same way you don't own that copy of Doom or Windows (or Linux), a purchaser of recorded music does not own the music, they own the media that music is stored on, and they have a limited right to use the music for themselves, so long as 'using' doesn't mean 'making unlicensed copies of' or 'broadcasting' the recorded work.

There has long been a school of thought that those who buy music have the right to do as they please with it. By the same token there is school of thought that says that an artist or composer has the sole exclusive right to decide how and when their work will be used, and for what price. While the arguments on both sides are loud and have both valid, positive points and invalid, negative points, it is not the intent of this article to engage that particular debate.

However, it is worth noting that the debate exists; at its very basic level, it comes down to a question of the right of an artist to be paid versus the right of a consumer to own what they purchase and have the Music clearance rights.

Synchronization Rights:
The right to use the music in timed relations with other visual
elements in a film, video, television show/commercial, or other audio/visual production. In other words, the right to use the music as a soundtrack with visual images. Synchronization licenses are obtained from the publisher (or composer if no publisher) or the music library.

Master Use Rights:
When you hear music on the radio or TV, this recording is known in the
music industry as the "master recording". This is what is produced after all the musicians have played their parts and these parts have been "mixed" together for release. The recording of the master is also protected by copyright. A record label or music library owns this copyright, and can grant the right to use the recording in a compilation album, film soundtrack or other Audio/Visual medium. It grants the right to use the sound recording.

Performance Rights (Music Licensing)
A brochure from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) states, "Any user who performs copyrighted musical works in public, and whose performances are not specifically exempt under the law, needs a license from ASCAP or from the members whose works the user wishes to perform."

Mechanical Rights:
License granting the right to record and release a specific composition
at an agreed-upon fee per unit Copyright: The exclusive right, granted by law for a stated period, usually until 70 years after the death of the surviving author of the work, to make, dispose of, and otherwise control copies of literary, musical, dramatic, pictorial and other copyrightable works.

HOW TO SECURE A COPYRIGHT
Copyright Secured Automatically upon Creation The way in which copyright protection is secured is frequently misunderstood. No publication or registration or other action in the Copyright Office is required to secure copyright. (See following Note.) There are, however, certain definite advantages to registration. See "Copyright Registration."

Copyright is secured automatically when the work is created, and a work is "created" when it is fixed in a copy or phonorecord for the first time. "Copies" are material objects from which a work can be read or visually perceived either directly or with the aid of a machine or device, such as books, manuscripts, sheet music, film, videotape, or microfilm.

"Phonorecords" are material objects embodying fixations of sounds (excluding, by statutory definition, motion picture soundtracks), such as cassette tapes, CDs, or LPs. Thus, for example, a song (the "work") can be fixed in sheet music (" copies") or in phonograph disks (" phonorecords"), or both.

If a work is prepared over a period of time, the part of the work that is fixed on a
particular date constitutes the created work as of that date.