Music Biz Quiz
This quiz presented by TuneCore’s Songwriter Service:
1. ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC are:
a. Publishers
b. Performance rights organizations
c. Labels
d. No idea
2. In order to create a copyright, you must:
a. Mail a copy to yourself
b. Register the release with the Library of Congress
c. Fix an original work in a tangible form (write it down or record it)
d. No idea
3. SoundExchange is an organization that:
a. Collects royalties from terrestrial radio play on behalf of songwriters
b. Issues licenses to venues so they can play music
c. Collects statutory royalties from satellite radio, Internet radio, cable TV music channels and similar platforms for streaming sound recordings
d. No idea
4. When you create a copyright you are automatically granted 6 legal rights. Which of the below is NOT one of the rights granted?
a. The right to reproduce
b. The right to distribute
c. The right to create samples
d. The right to display
5. True or False: in the U.S., movie theaters do not pay a public performance royalty to songwriters:
a. True
b. False
Answers to the above questions:
1. a. One of the six exclusive rights you are granted when you create an original work and fix it in a tangible medium is the right to publicly perform the work. This doesn’t just mean that, unless you give permission, you and only you can play the song live in public (though it does mean that). It also means that you have to grant anyone who wants to “broadcast” the song—whether it’s a radio station, TV station, website, bookstore or restaurant—permission to do so. It would, of course, be virtually impossible for every radio station, for example, to go to every songwriter and get their permission every time they wanted to play the artist’s song.
Therefore, clearinghouse agencies (in the U.S., these clearinghouse agencies are called Performance Rights Organizations—ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC) were created to act on behalf of these writers. The writers give one of these PROs the right to negotiate on their behalf with broadcasters, and issue licenses to the broadcasters to publicly perform the work of the writers who are affiliated with the PRO. The PROs collect license fees from these broadcasters and distribute the collected money (after deducting their expenses) amongst the affiliated writers based upon the amount and type of usage of the song(s).
2. c. So long as your song is original and of sufficient length to be considered a “work,” all you need to do to be granted the copyright is either write it down or record it. When you do so, you are granted six exclusive rights that are the foundation of the entire music business.
However, there are many advantages to registering your copyright. Most importantly, doing so gives you the right to sue for infringement. If you don’t register, you can’t sue.
Choice a (Mail it to yourself) is referred to as “poor-man’s copyright.” People did (do) this in order to establish a date of creation, so that if someone claims to have written the song before they did, they pull out the envelope (unopened, of course) and show the postage mark with the date. While this is certainly evidence of a date of creation, in an era of sophisticated laser printers, forgery is possible. Registration is the best way to establish a date.
3. c. SoundExchange operates in a similar manner to the PROs described in answer one, with some important differences. While the PROs collect public performance income on behalf of songwriters, SoundExchange collects public performance income on behalf of performers and content owners (i.e. labels) when their works are publicly performed digitally in a non-interactive manner. In other words, if you’re a performer and/or a label, and your music is used on Pandora, Satelite Radio, or any other type of non-interactive internet stream, you are owed money, and SoundExchange’s job is to collect it for you.
4. c. Creating samples of your own music is fine (though not one of the explicit six legal rights), but creating samples of someone else’s work is not. A sample is a derivative work, and derivative works are one of the rights you automatically get when you fix an original work in a tangible form. In addition to samples, derivative works are things like translations, pantomimes, and so on. Only the copyright holder can create these derivative works. And thus, if you want to sample someone else’s work, you must get their approval (both the approval of the copyright holder of the song, and the copyright holder of the master recording from which you pulled the sample). Similarly, if someone wants to sample your work, they have to get your approval to do so.
5. True. This is one of the strange vagaries of U.S. copyright law. Even though, undoubtedly, a song played in a movie theater is a public performance, movie theaters are exempt from having to get a license from the copyright holder (or PRO). Theories abound about why, but it appears to be as a result of record labels growing out of the movie industry, and the movie industry having a powerful lobby.
TuneCore has launched a new service that helps songwriters collect money that is rightfully theirs. Check out the new Songwriter Publishing Administration Service to see if it’s the right fit for you: http://www.tunecore.com/songwriters
