Publishing income and backend royalties are two separate revenue streams. Music Publishing is the commercial exploitation of copyrights through various forms of licensing. Publishing income (referred to as mechanical royalties) flows from various forms of licensing including but not limited to the following: 1) mechanical licensing (granted to a third party who is interested in recording or distributing the song); 2) compulsory mechanical licensing (allows any third party to record and distribute a commercially released song, without requesting permission from the publisher, as long as such third party pays to the copyright owner the mechanical licensing rates established by the copyright laws); 3) synchronization licensing (covers the use of a song with visual images(i.e. videos)); 4) performance licensing (a blanket license offered by performing rights organizations (i.e. ASCAP, BMI, SESAC) to venues and businesses for the public performance of a song); and 5) licensing of print music (income generated from the sale of sheet music). In the hip-hop genre, the term "producer" is sometimes incorrectly used interchangeably with "composer" or "writer." The reality is, just because you create a track, does not mean you are the producer. In other words, a person who creates a beat owns publishing in the track and will be entitled to mechanical or publishing royalties, hence a copyright owner. If another person steps in and adds an underlying melody to the same track, he too will own publishing in the track, but may arguably claim to be the producer, if he was responsible for the arrangement and mixing of the recording. Such persons classified as the producer will be entitled to both publishing royalties and producer (backend) royalties. In the event that the latter of the two persons was only responsible for the arrangement and mixing of the recording, he would not be considered a writer of the track and would only be entitled to producer royalties for his services. The general rule of thumb is, unless otherwise agreed, ownership in a musical composition is split 50/50 between the person writing (composing) the music and the person writing the lyrics and the melody.
Posted on: Mon, 30 Sep 2013 02:25:19 +0000
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