What Can You Do With a Copyright?

Understanding the power of owning your copyright can help you understand why it’s so important to know about it as a musician.

Copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy and distribute creative work, usually for a limited time. So, let’s say you wrote a song named “XYZ” or sung it, it instantly becomes copyrightable. You can further get full protection through copyright by submitting your works to the Copyright Office. 

Owning copyright, allows you to have certain rights. You exclusively hold the right to reproduction, distribution, performance, derivation, and display. What that means is that without your permission no one can use it in an audible or visual form.

Let’s say you write XYZ, no one would be able to re-record it, put it in a movie or a commercial or a television show. However, if you were to print CDs of your release, the person creating the CDs would have the right to reproduce it. However, that would allow the person to only reproduce it and not distribute it. That would require a separate license.

Now, let’s say you released a dance track called “ABC” and the DJ who is your friend likes your track and wants to use it during his set. He would require your permission to perform it publicly. Public performance could be anywhere from a concert, to an In-N-Out, to the elevator. Your DJ friend can even use samples to create another track from it or they could just change the lyrics to something else. They’d require a right to make a derivative work as their work is derived from the original. 

The right to display one’s work might seem similar to the right to perform. However, the right to display allows for the music to be played in the areas in which paintings, sculptural work, pictorial work and much more are being displayed.

When you sign to a label, you also sign away the rights to your music to the label. From that moment on, the label is in control of where, how and by whom your music is being used. On one hand, if you’re an independent artist and own the copyright to your music, it allows for the money to get directed towards you. On the other hand, if you are signed to a label, the revenue is collected by the label and you receive a percentage from the sales and streams. However, labels work with high budgets on projects while also allowing more opportunities to collaborate with other artists mainstream or indie so it becomes the artists choice to decide what path they want to choose.