A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educational, or musical form. Copyright is intended to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itself. A copyright is subject to limitations based on public interest considerations, such as the fair use doctrine in the United States.
The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) is an American not-for-profit performance-rights organization (PRO) that collectively licenses the public performance rights of its members' musical works to venues, broadcasters, and digital streaming services.
Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) is a performance rights organization in the United States. It collects blanket license fees from businesses that use music, entitling those businesses to play or sync any songs from BMI's repertoire of over 20.6 million musical works. On a quarterly basis, BMI distributes the money to songwriters, composers, and music publishers as royalties to those members whose works have been performed.
Copyrights can either be licensed or assigned by the owner of the copyright. A copyright collective is a non-governmental body created by copyright law or private agreement which licenses copyrighted works on behalf of the authors and engages in collective rights management. Copyright societies track all the events and venues where copyrighted works are used and ensure that the copyright holders listed with the society are remunerated for such usage. The copyright society publishes its own tariff scheme on its websites and collects a nominal administrative fee on every transaction.
A performance rights organisation (PRO), also known as a performing rights society, provides intermediary functions, particularly collection of royalties, between copyright holders and parties who wish to use copyrighted works publicly in locations such as shopping and dining venues. Legal consumer purchase of works, such as buying CDs from a music store, confer private performance rights. PROs usually only collect royalties when use of a work is incidental to an organisation's purpose. Royalties for works essential to an organisation's purpose, such as theaters and radio, are usually negotiated directly with the rights holder. The interest of the organisations varies: many have the sole focus of musical works, while others may also encompass works and authors for audiovisual, drama, literature, or the visual arts.
PRS for Music Limited is a British music copyright collective, made up of 2 collection societies: the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society (MCPS) and the Performing Right Society (PRS). It undertakes collective rights management for musical works on behalf of its 160,000 members. PRS for Music was formed in 1997 following the MCPS-PRS Alliance. In 2009, PRS and MCPS-PRS Alliance realigned their brands and became PRS for Music.
A royalty payment is a payment made by one party to another that owns a particular asset, for the right to ongoing use of that asset. Royalties are typically agreed upon as a percentage of gross or net revenues derived from the use of an asset or a fixed price per unit sold of an item of such, but there are also other modes and metrics of compensation. A royalty interest is the right to collect a stream of future royalty payments.
APRA AMCOS consists of Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) and Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society (AMCOS), both copyright management organisations or copyright collectives which jointly represent over 100,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers in Australia and New Zealand. The two organisations work together to license public performances and administer performance, communication and reproduction rights on behalf of their members, who are creators of musical works, aiming to ensure fair payments to members and to defend their rights under the Australian Copyright Act (1968).
Music licensing is the licensed use of copyrighted music. Music licensing is intended to ensure that the owners of copyrights on musical works are compensated for certain uses of their work. A purchaser has limited rights to use the work without a separate agreement.
Performing rights are the right to perform music in public. It is part of copyright law and demands payment to the music's composer/lyricist and publisher. Performances are considered "public" if they take place in a public place and the audience is outside of a normal circle of friends and family, including concerts nightclubs, restaurants etc. Public performance also includes broadcast and cable television, radio, and any other transmitted performance of a live song.
The Gesellschaft für musikalische Aufführungs- und mechanische Vervielfältigungsrechte is a government-mandated collecting society and performance rights organization based in Germany, with administrative offices in Berlin and Munich. GEMA represents the usage rights stemming from authors' rights for the musical works of those composers, lyricists, and publishers who are members in the organization. It is the only such institution in Germany and a member of BIEM and CISAC. Other collecting societies include the (AKM) Society of authors, composers and music publishers in Austria and SUISA in Switzerland.
Public domain music is music to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply.
The Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers, often referred to as JASRAC, is a Japanese copyright collection society. It was founded in 1939 as a nonprofit organization, and is the largest musical copyright administration society in Japan.
Production music is recorded music that can be licensed to customers for use in film, television, radio and other media. Often, the music is produced and owned by production music libraries.
Music Reports serves individuals and organizations seeking expertise and solutions in music rights licensing, administration, royalty accounting, and software development and hosting. Music Reports operates the largest registry of worldwide music rights and related business information.
The Composers, Authors and Publishers Association of Canada was a Canadian copyright collective for the right to communicate with the public and publicly perform musical works. CAPAC administered these rights on behalf of its members and those of affiliated international organizations by licensing the use of their music in Canada. Royalties were paid to the music creators after administration costs were deducted to pay for the operation of CAPAC.
Arista Records, LLC v. LAUNCH Media, Inc., 578 F.3d 148, is a legal case brought by Arista Records, LLC, Bad Boy Records, BMG Music, and Zomba Recording LLC alleging that the webcasting service provided by LAUNCH Media, Inc. ("Launch") willfully infringed BMG's sound recording copyrights. The lawsuit concerns the scope of the statutory term "interactive service" codified in 17 U.S.C. § 114, as amended by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 ("DMCA"). If the webcasting service is an interactive service, Launch would be required to pay individual licensing fees to BMG's sound recording copyright holders; otherwise, Launch only need to pay "a statutory licensing fee set by the Copyright Royalty Board."
Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) v. Bell Canada, 2012 SCC 36, is a leading Canadian case on the application of fair dealing under s. 29 of the Copyright Act. It pertained to the use of previews of musical works on online music services that sell digital files of musical works.
Entertainment Software Ass'n v. Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada, 2012 SCC 34, is a landmark Supreme Court of Canada judgement that clarified the nature of and relationship between, the bundle of rights created for copyright owners under section 3(1) of the Copyright Act of Canada. In particular, the Supreme Court considered the relationship between the reproduction and communication rights under the Copyright Act, and applied the principle of technological neutrality to hold that downloading a work engaged only the reproduction right, and not the communication right.
The Jamaica Association of Composers, Authors and Publishers (JACAP) is a Jamaican not-for-profit membership collective management organization which was established in 1998. JACAP administers the public performance and, if assigned also, the mechanical (reproductive) rights and synchronization rights of lyricists (authors), music composers and music publishers in Jamaica. JACAP is a member of the umbrella organisation for copyright societies CISAC - The International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers. JACAP is also a founding member of The Association of Caribbean Copyright Societies (ACCS).
