Understanding Copyright Law With Aurelia J Schultz
This week The Music Industry Incubator hosts Aurelia J. Schultz who is an international copyright expert with 15 years of experience in African Copyright.
She earned her BA in Religious Studies from Carroll College and her Juris Doctorate from Vanderbilt University Law School in Nashville. She began her legal career at Creative Commons where she was the first Africa Regional Coordinator. Most recently, she served as Counsel for Policy and International Affairs at the U.S. Copyright Office. She has trained artists, industry professionals and government officials around the world and enjoys collaborating with others to improve our global creative industries.
What is A Music Copyright?
A copyright is the legal mechanism that gives you a property right indoor creation. It changes you from a creator into an owner and that's important because property rights are alienable, which means that you can buy them and sell them, lease them, and rent them and trade them.
Summary
00:51 Intro to Copyright
2:14 What is mechanical right
8:40 What is WIPO
10:15 Importance of treaties and how they affect you
16:00 As an artist who is collaborating how is copyright ownership determined
19:20 Who owns the sound recordings
24:00 How long does Copyright last
26:55 How to enforce your copyright
29:49 How to enforce your copyright
31:50 Protecting your copyright
35:00 How your copyright works across territories
40:15 How attribution works
45:01 How to protect your work
46:26 What do Public Domain and Fair Use mean
50:50 Copyrighting a sound using sheet music
Additional Information
Zimbabwe currently uses the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act of 2004 (Chapter 26:05). This law uses specialized language that is harmonized globally to explain who gets what rights in which types of creative works. This specialized language makes it easier for you to get paid when your songs are used or played in other countries, but the downside is that the specialized language can be challenging to learn. Once you understand it, though, you’ll be in really good shape to make music your career and not just your passion.
The most important thing to understand about copyright is that the original creators of works and their heirs are protected by basic rights. They are called “authors” under the law and hold the exclusive right to use or authorize others to use their work. There are certain uses where a copyright owner cannot control the use of their work. These are called “exceptions and limitations” under the law; you may see us mention these from time to time.
Copyright protection extends only to the expressions and not to ideas, feels, grooves, etc. This means that for a copyright to exist, the song has to actually exist in some form. This is why we said documenting the process of creating a song is so important.
What an average listener thinks of as “a song,” the copyright law thinks of as a combination of several different works. Each work can be created and owned by a different person or even different groups of people
In music there are 3 separate rights;
The Composition
This consists of the underlying music, lyrics and melody. These are owned by the composers and/or the publisher.
The Sound Recording
This is the recording of the composition. The copyright to the sound recording is owned by the person who paid for the recording to happen. This is usually a record label but can be the recording artist or another funder. Under the Zimbabwean Copyright Act, the person funding the recording can pay with money or “money’s worth,” which means bartering and other exchanges can count. When you hear someone say they “own their own masters,” they mean they own their sound recording rights.
The Performance
This is a particular rendition of a musical work by a particular performer or group of performers. The performer or performers have rights in their particular performance. The law guarantees performers payment for the commercial use of their recordings. By law, this money is paid to the sound recording owner and the sound recording owner is responsible for paying the performer. If you are a performer and not the sound recording owner, you should negotiate with the sound recording owner and include your royalty percentage in your contract. (Note that there are also “performance rights” in compositions and sound recordings when the composition or sound recording is performed in public, which are different from performers’ rights in their performances.)
When thinking of these rights, think of a set of blueprints for your house. You can create one set of blueprints for a house (the composition) but those blueprints can be used several times over by different builders (performers) to create their own houses (the sound recording). The most commonly used example is that of Dolly Parton’s smash hit “I Will Always Love You”. Dolly composed and recorded this song, then released it in 1973. Kevin Costner fell in love with Linda Rondstadt’s 1975 version and suggested it to Whitney Houston in the 1990s. Whitney Houston’s version became a massive hit. All three of these recordings used Dolly’s composition, and Dolly earns revenue as a composer for all of them. She also earns revenue as a performing artist for her 1973 version.
Music Publishing
If you are involved in the creation of a song as a songwriter, composer, producer, or beatmaker then you are entitled to revenue whenever that composition is exploited.
Some examples of revenue you are entitled to
Streaming
Downloads
Covers
Radio Play
Public Performance
Sampling
Sync Deals
“Music publishing is the owning and exploiting of songs in the form of musical copyrights.”
– Randall Wixen, The Plain and Simple Guide to Music Publishing.
If you have written an original song, and you have not signed away the rights to those songs via a publishing deal then you own that composition. You have the right to exploit the publishing rights of your music however you see fit. You will also be entitled to collect performance royalties when your songs are played on the radio or in venues (even if you are not the person performing the song). To collect these sources of revenue you need to register with both a publisher like Sheer or SongTrust and also with a CMO
Ownership
If you’re a songwriter who has not signed away any of your publishing rights then you are both the songwriter and the publisher. This is called a self-administered songwriter. You are owed both shares (for the songwriter and for the publisher) of any royalties that your songs generate. However, you cannot just release music and watch publishing revenue trickle into your account, you actively have to collect it. That is why it is imperative that you sign up with a CMO and also consider signing a publishing deal so the publisher can do the heavy lifting to collect your revenue on your behalf.