#Music licence review for artists full#
#Music licence review for artists plus#

It is, however, common for a record contract to specify that instead the record company is the sole owner of this copyright, giving it full power to license the music to other parties.Īny copyright owner has the exclusive right to communicate their copyright material to the public.

#Music licence review for artists plus#

The third copyright is the copyright in the sound recording itself, which (for recordings made after 2005) is generally owned by all the performers on the recording, plus whoever owns the master at the time (often a record company).

APRA-AMCOS distributes these earnings to its members in proportions corresponding to the number of downloads of each song. These can generally be obtained through APRA-AMCOS (if the copyright owners are members) in exchange for a fee based on a percentage of the MSS’s revenue. For an MSS to be able to legally stream the song, it needs a licence from both these copyright owners. The first two copyrights are the copyright in the song itself (the “musical work”) usually owned by the songwriter, and copyright in the lyrics (the “literary work”) usually owned by the lyricist. There are usually three separate copyrights to consider in a song recording. How do MSSs obtain permission to upload artists’ music for streaming? This article will examine how MSSs licence music, how their revenue is distributed, and analyse whether they benefit or exploit musicians. With such services already prospering in overseas markets and predicted to take over a significant share of the blossoming Australian digital music market over the next few years, concerns have been raised as to whether or not these services pay musicians fairly.

This model is a departure from the concept of “owning” music, and is set to redefine the way music is consumed. These services offer subscribers unlimited access to stream from an online library of millions of songs in exchange for a subscription fee (or in some circumstances, offer free access with advertisements). The last 12 months have seen a huge influx of digital music-streaming services (“ MSSs“) such as Spotify into the Australian online music market.