MUS208 - Music Law - Case Study On Australia
Added on - 04 Mar 2020
In this document, we will discuss how to compose a song alone as compared to composing it with other co-writers when it comes to the legal regulation of its ownership. Copyright can be about things such as graphics, images, text, and sound. Thus the composition of a song comes under the protection of copyrights in Australia.
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Running head: MUSIC LAWSMusic LawsName of the StudentName of the UniversityAuthor Note
1MUSIC LAWSPart 1It is very simple to compose a song alone as compared to composing it with other co-writers when it comes to the legal consequences of its ownership. There is no mandatoryregistration of copyrights in Australia. Through the concept of copyright the state providesprotection to the person who uses their idea to create a valuable composition. Copyright can bein relation to things such as graphic, images, text and sound. Thus the composition of a songcomes under the protection of copyrights in Australia. Whenever a musical track is created thereare more than one owners of the copyright. These include the composer by whom the song iswritten owning the copyright of the music, the person who wrote the lyrics owning the copyrightof the literature and music performer owns copyrights in relation to sound recordings (Homan2015).The copyrights laws in relation to joint ownership of property provide that there is noseparate ownership of a property with respect to copyright as per theCopyright Act 1968. Thismeans that if there are four owners of a work the ownership would not be 25% each but all fourmembers would hold 100% ownership of the rights as provided by the case ofcecinsky vGeorge Routledge & Sons Ltd(1916) 2 KB 325.All co-owners are joint owners of thecopyright in a property. The joint owners cannot exercise their rights without the consent of theother owners. However when there is no agreement related to the ownership of copyright a coowner may exercise his right but has to share the profits with the other co owners. For instance ifa co-owner decides to conduct a music show alone he has to share the proceeding with the otherowners of the song. If the right of any co-owner had been infringed by the other ownercompensation can be claimed from them as provided by the case ofPrior v Lansdowne PressPty Ltd(1977) VR 65.
2MUSIC LAWSIn this case the music rights are owned by Mel, the literary rights are owned by Paul thelive performance rights are owned by Tom and Kim and the whole bands owns the copyrightwith respect to the sound recording. As discussed above all of them are joint owners of thecopyright which exists in the song and each person is liable to the other in case of anyinfringement. Thus if a distribution is to be done 20% has to be provided to each person alongwith the band.Part 2The simplest way to sell a piece of music to digital distribution services is through the useof Aggregators. The work of the aggregator is to submit the music to various services across theworld along with the collection of royalties from streaming or downloads. More than 40 digitalaggregators are operating all over the world. Aggregator can be paid simple fees or they charge apercentage of income. Services like Band camp and Louder charge percentage fees and serviceswhich charge per song basis include DistroKid and TuneCore.Aggregators are gatekeepers between the big platforms and individual artists. Forinstance the constnet which is accepted by iTunes are only from encoding houses which areapproved. In theory, an individual artists can send content directly to iTunes from an encodinghouse approved by Apple. However in most cases the application requirements would not be metby the artists.As provided by Apple, Aggregators are individuals who are expert in providing contentto iTunes. They can appropriately format and deliver the consents of an individual to apple for afee. The maximum numbers of independent songs which are available on iTunes have beengiven by the aggregator partners. Only those contents which have been encoded and delivered by
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In brief, we included the royalties of the songwriter come from a public performance such as when the song is played on the radio or any restaurant along with the sales of the single or recorded album. When it comes to the qualities of a recording artist they are only eligible to gain royalty from a single or a recorded album sale. The payment of royalties when it comes to record sales is derived from how the calculation is made. Mostly record contracts are not a very straightforward deal.