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The Magic Bundle of Rights for Musicians under the Copyright Act
You are possibly asking yourself at this point –How does this information help me as a label, or a musician? The magical bundle of rights is how you make money $$$ -This magic bundle describes the relationship between the label and the artist. The recording and publishing contracts are simply a negotiation in how much of these valuable rights is the artist going to transfer to the label. The Label is simply balancing the risk v. the reward. The musician is doing exactly the same thinking. If the Label gives me this much money to make a record for them –how much do I have to give up to earn this money? [The answer in many cases, is that the artist must give up almost the entire "magic bundle" to the label.] So lets look a little closer at the "magic bundle" of rights contained in the Copyright Act:
A brief (not really) aside
:
What exactly is copyrightable on a musical recording, be it a tape, CD, or record, or some other new media?
To clear up a little confusion early and explain what will become obvious during this discussion: Copyright Law has resisted, for a very long period of time, recognizing "sound recordings" as copyrightable subject matter. That is, copyright law has not always recognized the process of fixing notes in a sound recording (tangible medium of expression such as a phonorecord, CD, tape, or any other type of recording media) as an "original work of authorship" and therefore not granted copyright protection to the recording itself. Note that what we are talking about here is the recording itself –and not the underlying musical composition. Huh?
If we look at a typical recording there are at least 2 copyrights in any sound recording, be it a record, CD, or tape. The composer of the musical piece has a copyright in the musical composition (hereinafter this will be referred to as the copyright in the musical composition no matter what the underlying work may be - e.g. spoken word poetry etc.) that is to be recorded on the media, and the artist or band that records the musical composition has a copyright in the "sound recording."
Example 1: Gordon Ogilvie, a journalist writes the song "Suspect Device" to be recorded on the first Stiff Little Fingers record. As soon as Gordon writes the lyrics down on a piece of paper and therefore "fixing them in a tangible medium of expression" he holds a copyright in the musical composition. The moment pen hits paper, even if not a single note of the composition has been played –Gordon has a copyright, which exist at the moment of fixation in a tangible medium of expression from which it can be reproduced.
Now, Jake Burns and the rest of Stiff Little Fingers, Henry Cluney, Brian Faloon and Ali McMordie write music for those lyrics. They demo the song using Gordon’s lyrics for their own Rigid Digits Label. As soon as they fix the song in a tangible medium of expression from which it can be reproduced –the demo tape, they hold a copyright, not in the lyrics (those are owned by Olgilvie) but in the musical composition underlying those lyrics. And that demo tape? They also hold a copyright in the "sound recording" which holds the combination of the two underlying copyrighted pieces –Gordon’s lyrics and Stiff Little Fingers music.
Stiff Little Fingers record the single for release. The question becomes who owns the copyright in the sound recording? Gordon still owns the lyric copyright, Stiff Little Fingers holds the copyright in the musical composition –and both share in any songwriting royalties as a joint work of authorship. (For purists this is a complicated issue and best left to another article entitled "Joint Works, Derivative Works, and other Copyright Problems ") But Stiff Little Fingers alone holds the copyright in the sound recording.
After our little detour ….
