Music royalties
Music royalties are royalty payments for the writing and performing of music. Unlike other forms of intellectual property, music has a strong linkage to individuals – composers, songwriters and writers of musical plays – in that they can own the exclusive copyright to created music and can license it for performance independent of corporates. Recording companies and the performing artists that create a "sound recording" of the music enjoy a separate set of copyrights and royalties from the sale of recordings and from their digital transmission.
With the advent of pop music and major innovations in technology in the communication and presentations of media, the subject of music royalties has become a complex field with considerable change in the making.
A musical composition obtains copyright protection as soon as it is written out or recorded. However, it is not protected from infringed use unless it is registered with the copyright authority, for instance, the United States Copyright Office, which is administered by the Library of Congress. No person or entity, other than the copyright owner, can use or employ the music for gain without obtaining a license from the composer/songwriter.
Inherently, as copyright, it confers on its owner, a distinctive "bundle" of five exclusive rights:
Where the score and the lyric of a composition are contributions of different persons, each of them is an equal owner of such rights.
These exclusive rights have led to the evolution of distinct commercial terminology used in the music industry.
They take four forms:
With the advent of the internet, an additional set of royalties has come into play: the digital rights from simulcasting, webcasting, streaming, downloading, and online "on-demand service".
In the following the terms "composer" and "songwriter" are synonymous.
Print rights in music
While the focus here is on royalty rates pertaining to music marketed in the print form or "sheet music", its discussion is a prelude to the much more important and larger sources of royalty income today from music sold in media such as CDs, television and the internet.Sheet music is the first form of music to which royalties were applied, which was then gradually extended to other formats. Any performance of music by singers or bands requires that it be first reduced to its written sheet form from which the "song" and its lyric are read. Otherwise, the authenticity of its origin, essential for copyright claims, will be lost, as was the case with folk songs and American "westerns" propagated by the oral tradition.
Brief history
The ability to print music arises from a series of technological developments in print and art histories from the 11th to the 18th centuries.The first, and commercially successful, invention was the development of the "movable type" printing press, the Gutenberg press in the 15th century; it was used to print the Gutenberg Bible. Later the printing system enabled printed music. Printed music, until then, tended to be one line chants. The difficulty in using movable type for music is that all the elements must align – the note head must be properly aligned with the staff, lest it have an unintended meaning.
Musical notation was well developed by then, originating around 1025. Guido d'Arezzo developed a system of pitch notation using lines and spaces. Until this time, only two lines had been used. d'Arezzo expanded this system to four lines, and initiated the idea of ledger lines by adding lines above or below these lines as needed. He used square notes called neumes. This system eliminated any uncertainty of pitch. d'Arezzo also developed a system of clefs, which became the basis for the clef system: bass clef, treble clef, and so on..
In Europe the major consumers of printed music in the 17th and 18th centuries were the royal courts for both solemn and festive occasions. Music was also employed for entertainment, both by the courts and the nobility. Composers made their livings from commissioned work, and worked as conductors, performers and tutors of music or through appointments to the courts. To a certain extent, music publishers also paid composers for rights to print music, but this was not royalty as is generally understood today.
The European Church was also a large user of music, both religious and secular. However, performances were largely based on hand-written music or aural training.
American origins of music copyright and royalties
Until the mid-18th century, American popular music largely consisted of songs from the British Isles, whose lyric and score were sometimes available in engraved prints. Mass production of music was not possible until movable type was introduced. Music with this type was first printed in the US in 1750. At the beginning the type consisted of the notehead, stem and staff which were combined into a single font. Later the fonts were made up of the notehead, stems and flags attached to the staff line. Until that time, prints existed only on engraved plates.The first federal law on copyright was enacted in the US Copyright Act of 1790 which made it possible to give protection to original scores and lyrics.
America's most prominent contribution is jazz and all the music styles which preceded and co-exist with it – its variations on church music, African-American work songs, cornfield hollers, wind bands in funeral procession, blues, rag, etc. – and of innovations in church music, rhythmic variations, stamping, tapping of feet, strutting, shuffling, wailing, laments and spiritual ecstasy.
Until its recent sophistication, jazz was not amenable to written form, and thus not copyrightable, due to its improvisational element and the fact that many of the creators of this form could not read or write music. It was its precursor, minstrelsy, which came to be written and royalties paid for the use of popular music.
Blackface minstrelsy was the first distinctly American theatrical form. In the 1830s and 1840s, it was at the core of the rise of an American music industry.
Stephen Foster was the pre-eminent songwriter in the US of that time. His songs, such as "Oh! Susanna", "Camptown Races", "My Old Kentucky Home", "Beautiful Dreamer" and "Swanee River" remain popular 150 years after their composition and have worldwide appreciation. Foster, who had little formal music training, composed songs for Christy's Minstrels, one of the prominent minstrel groups of the time.
W.C. Peters was the first major publisher of Foster's works, but Foster saw very little of the profits. "Oh, Susanna" was an overnight success and a Goldrush favorite, but Foster received just $100 from his publisher for it – in part due to his lack of interest in money and the free gifts of music he gave to him. Foster's first love lay in writing music and its success. Foster did later contract with Christy for "Old Folks at Home" and "Farewell my Lilly Dear". "Oh, Susanna" also led Foster to two New York publishers, Firth, Pond and Co. and F.D. Benson, who contracted with him to pay royalties at 2¢ per printed copy sold by them.
Minstrelsy slowly gave way to songs generated by the American Civil War, followed by the rise of Tin Pan Alley and Parlour music, both of which led to an explosion of sheet music, greatly aided by the emergence of the player piano. While the player piano made inroads deep into the 20th century, more music was reproduced through radio and the phonograph, leading to new forms of royalty payments, and leading to the decline of sheet music.
American innovations in church music also provided royalties to its creators. While Stephen Foster is often credited as the originator of print music in America, William Billings is the real father of American music. In 1782, of the 264 music compositions in print, 226 were his church-related compositions. Similarly, Billings was the composer of a quarter of the 200 anthems published until 1810. Neither he nor his family received any royalties, although the Copyright Act of 1790 was then in place.
Church music plays a significant part in American print royalties. When the Lutheran Church split from the Catholic Church in the 16th century, more than religion changed. Martin Luther wanted his entire congregation to take part in the music of his services, not just the choir. This new chorale style finds its way in both present church music and jazz.
Print royalties (music)
The royalty rate for printing a book for sale globally, or for its download, varies from 20 to 30% of the suggested retail sales value, which is collected by the publisher/distributor. The payment is made by the publisher/distributor and corresponds to the agreement between the writer and the publisher/distributor as with other music royalties. The agreement is typically non-exclusive to the publisher and the term may vary from 3–5 years. Established writers favor certain publishers/distributors and usually receive higher royalties.All of the royalty does not go directly to the writer. Rather, it is shared with the publisher on a 50:50 basis.
If a book involved is a play, it might be dramatized. The right to dramatize is a separate right – known as grand rights. This income is shared by the many personalities and organizations who come together to offer the play: the playwright, composer of the music played, producer, director of the play and so forth. There is no convention to the royalties paid for grand rights and it is freely negotiated between the publisher and the mentioned participants.
If the writer's work is only part of a publication, then the royalty paid is pro-rata, a facet which is more often met in a book of lyrics or in a book of hymns and sometimes in an anthology.
Church music – that is, music that is based on written work – is important particularly in the Americas and in some other countries of Europe. Examples are hymns, anthems, and songbooks. Unlike novels and plays, hymns are sung with regularity. Very often, the hymns and songs are sung from lyrics in a book, or more common nowadays, from the work projected on a computer screen. In the US, the Christian Copyright Licensing International, Inc. is the collection agency for royalties but a song or hymn writers have to be registered with them and the songs identified.