Gimmie That Beat

Today’s Topic: “Work-For-Hire” Agreements   According to the United States Copyright Act [17 USC Sec. 102] , an author enjoys copyright protection as soon as he/she “fixes” his/her original work in a “tangible medium of expression” (for example by writing it down or recording it). The same principle applies, however, for independent contractors (artists, back-up musicians, back-up vocalists, etc.) who are hired to contribute to larger productions. What does that mean? Well, artists, that means that even though you pay the back-up singers on your tracks, or the graphic designers, video editors, and web developers to help package your branding tools, each contributor continues to have ownership in whatever original work they’ve created. Just because you’ve paid for a service does not mean that you own the product or the money you make from it (what we lawyers call “results and proceeds” )! We imagine at this point that you’ve probably become concerned about how you can own...

The owner of a copyright in a protected musical composition may use the work as (s)he wishes; conversely, (s)he may prevent others from using that work without authorization. Whenever a musical work ("song") is being performed for commercial purposes, that owner should almost always expect to receive a royalty. Making individual efforts to collect royalties, however, require hours of investigation and paperwork - tracking how many times the song has been played, determining whether it was performed on TV, in a film, on the radio or Internet, or calculating which percentage of the royalty goes to which owner (if the song has co-composers). This is where it makes sense to become a member of a Performance Rights Organization ("PRO"). The purpose of these organizations is to track the "public performance" of musical compositions (anything from elevator-music to radio play to live band concerts), collect license fees for copyright owners who are PRO member...