Protecting Your Rights in the Digital Age

Formidable outside forces, such as the birth of a new technology, can forever alter arts and culture in our world. The advent of digital technology has caused a dramatic paradigm shift—one that is still being defined—in the control and delivery of music. Entire catalogs of content are now traded more quickly than a register could ring up a sale at a record store. 

Gaps in copyright (the law that protects artistic works and allows creators to control the exploitation of their works) continue to emerge, and courts are left to apply decades-old law to unanticipated situations arising from this new digital landscape. New copyright legislation is often introduced around the world, but as stakeholders lobby to maintain the status quo, significant change rarely occurs. (The 2018 Music Modernization Act and 2019 E.U. Copyright Directive seem to be exceptions rather than the norm.)

One thing remains clear, however: Music consumption has never been higher. With music surrounding us in television, film, video games, and satellite radio, and the ability to listen to nearly 100 million songs in our pocket, we listen to more music than ever. This means that musicians must be more careful than ever about understanding their rights and metadata.

Because copyright, revenue collection, and metadata can be overwhelming for creators, who often prefer to focus on their art, I have prepared short checklists for all artists and songwriters to keep in mind when preparing to release their music:

Artist Checklist

If you are an artist, here are few things to keep in mind:

✓  Register your sound recording copyrights at www.copyright.gov.
✓  Be sure to have assignment of copyright interest from any producers, hired studio musicians, or others who worked on your album.
✓  Join a performing rights organization (PRO) to collect performance royalties on public performances of your work(s).
✓  Make sure you have mechanical licenses in place for any songs you didn’t write.
✓  Clear licenses with publishers and labels for any sampling.
✓  For distribution of your music online, distributors such as CD Baby, TuneCore, and the Orchard offer the ability to get your music onto services such as Spotify and Apple Music without a record label.
✓  Join SoundExchange to receive royalties from digital performances.
✓  Check into collecting your neighboring-rights monies from overseas.
✓  Stay on top of any agreements you enter into with labels, promoters, etc. Be aware of termination dates, promotional commitments, your right to leave a label, etc.

Songwriter Checklist

Songwriters also have their share of work to do to ensure they are protected and can earn money from their musical compositions via recording and public performances. If you are a songwriter, here are few things to keep in mind:

✓  If you cowrote a song, be sure to talk to your cowriters about the split of copyright ownership, and set it forth in writing.
✓  Register your musical composition copyrights at www.copyright.gov.
✓  Join a PRO, and set up both writer and, if you do not have a publisher, publisher accounts. (Each will be entitled to 50 percent of your income and paid out separately.)
✓  Register with the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) to collect mechanical royalties in the U.S.

Allen Bargfrede, an entertainment attorney, is a former director of Berklee’s global entertainment and music business graduate program and was the founder of the Rethink Music think tank. The above is an excerpt from his Berklee Press book Music Law in the Digital Age.  

This article appeared in the fall/winter 2022 issue of Berklee Today.