subject: Get Your Music Licence For Composition And Sampling [print this page] How complicated is the web of the performance music license? Well, if you are a song composer looking to be fairly compensated for your intellectual creations, you should know that there is a music licence available for each type of potential use for your music. If you are a singer, producer, or author who wants to incorporate the works of another artist in some vehicle of your own, know that there is a license you must get to protect yourself from possible litigation. This includes public performance of another artist's creation. Before someone may play or perform an artist's music in public, that music must be licensed.
A radio station, TV station, a concert hall etc. each need a performance license in order to publicly perform music. The performance of music can mean two sets of associated copyrights: The copyright in the underlying composition or song, and the copyright in the sound recording. A author's performance right for the composition has been around for a long time and the Performance Rights Organizations (PROs) ASCAP, BMI and SESAC have been successfully licensing these rights. A performer or record label's public performance right for the sound recording is relatively new.
Certain amendments to the law in 1995 created a limited performance right for the digital transmission of sound recordings and set up a very composite licensing structure that treats different entities transmitting music differently. The result is a system that has proven difficult to navigate for all people involved. What was at one time a minimal number of possible performance establishments has increased dramatically with the coming of the digital era. High Definition radio stations, satellite radio broadcasting, and Internet webcasting have all ballooned in notability over the last ten years adding to the confusion surrounding the much needed Performance license. The modern era of artistic protection pretty much demands a music licence of some type, if only to let experts in the field use their skills to ensure fair compensation for the author and legal protection for the user.
A print publisher will likely want 50 percent of the retail price of whatever you sell, as well as an advance. Depending on the song, the number of units projected to sell, and the agreements the publisher might have with the composer's heirs, that could cost you thousands of dollars. Slightly different than composing unique arrangements of standard songs is the famous practice of sampling. Sampling is most on certain occasions heard in the notable genre of Hip Hop. If you want to use sampling in one of your recordings for distribution you should really ask yourself if sampling is actually needed, or if you can create something similar as a sample in your own studio without violating any copyright laws.
A music licence can help protect all parties connected to the creation and use of any produced artistic work. The label can hedge any bets on the financial success of any artist's work by granting certain licensing, some of which will sell all rights to a licensee, and gain compensation up front, thus acquiring a healthy cash flow. Additionally, geting a music licence for the right to use another artist's creation in some fashion will protect the licensee from probable law suits and or licit punishments doled out under the cover of copyright laws. Two of the most common types of music licensing are: - Master Use Rights: When you listen to music on the radio or TV, this music is known in the music industry as the "master recording". This is what is produced after all the musicians have played their contributions and these parts have been "mixed" together for mass distribution. The recording of the master is also protected by copyright. A record label or music library owns this copyright, and can concede the right to use the recording in a compilation album, film soundtrack or other Audio/Visual medium - Performing Rights: Public Performance Right is the only right the U.S. Copyright Law gives to the author of a musical work or other copyrighted material empoweringthe use in public. Every time a song is performed on a broadcast, there is a public performance.
