Music Law 101: What Does Copyright Law Protect?

Dec 2022

Music Law 101 is all about protecting different musical works along with sound recordings to its original creator. As copyright can be a confusing part, it is better to know what all it protects so that it becomes easy. It is known that each piece of recording has two types of copyrights.

First, it protects the musical composer. It indicates the arrangement and the combination of musical notes, harmonies, rhythm, chords, and the lyrics. The other name of this copyright is musical work. It deals with the musical composition of the song.
Second, it includes the recording of the song and known as sound recording. Here, the master or the recording of the song is protected by means of the copyright process.

However, musical copyright comes soon after completion of a sound recording, or any musical work is created. It is considered to be a satisfied one when the following elements are fulfilled.

The work should be an original work of the music artist
The work should be present in tangible form like sheet music, digital version as recording, or in the form of MIDI file.

Therefore, it is not mandatory to publish the recording work soon after it is created. With the advancement in technology, various ways have come into being. This makes storing of the songs and the files an easy one. As there are copyright protection issues pertaining to a new song recorded, it is necessary to ensure that it should be an original version of the song. This indicates that the work has been created independently with some extent of creativity in it.

According to rules, court laws stated that harmony and rhythm are something that belonged to the public domain. Whereas melody is the only ingredient that can be considered as original, and therefore, it needs to be given copyright protection. Also, the contribution of engineers handling the technical part of the sound recording along with producers should be protected, and therefore, it should come under protection rights. This apart, the musical style, idea of the music, theme need not be protected. Therefore, for the music companies and the music creators, it is important to know the details of the copyright protection so that it can help them to retain the originality of their work in this increasing popularity of the digital age of music.

How can protection rights help to handle infringement problems?

Often, the person charged for infringement action may argue that there is no copyright for the plaintiff’s work, and therefore, the song is not an original one. Here, phrases and words are considered to check the originality of the work and argument that the defendant claims. So, it should be known that phrases and words cannot be protected. The same words and phrases can be used by more than one singer to create and write music lyrics. Therefore, the law protects the musical work along with the sound recordings of the original work.

Trending Blogs

Pharma Companies File 15% of Patents in India

The Indian Pharma industry is primarily known for its Generic Drugs. But recently, to push its value higher in the market, the Indian pharmaceutical industry is investing more in research and development of new drugs along with increasing the potency of the existing ones to move up the value chain. From 2013-2015, out of the […]

Intellectual Property Rights in the Era of Counterfeit Goods

The industry of counterfeited products has taken shape due to the desire of customers to get hands-on high quality item at reasonable rates. They have great satisfaction in this and this is where the counterfeited goods are made available in the market. Different world markets are full of counterfeited products ranging from cosmetics, electronics, footwear, […]

The Big Push to Reform Music Copyright for the Digital Age

Music creators of the present digital age should be aware of the copyright issues better due to different reasons. Music is made available on different websites, and it is necessary to prevent the increasing problem of infringement. Pertaining to this, a number of bills are proposed in Congress that can enhance royalty payment for the […]

Copyrights of Music in India

Music is an art more specifically an intangible form of art. Copyrighting a song or a melody protects the basic right of the creator. The copyright also assist the creator financially. In order to ask for copyright the creator needs to file a registration. Once the creator gains the copyright, any infringement to the copyrighted […]

Intellectual Property Glance

The discussion on intellectual property starts with distributing it into three categories for the same of convenience and clarity. The product of intellectual efforts: The product of intellectual effort could be tangible or intangible encompassing such outcomes as literary creations, artistic creations, books, music, song, dance, drama, sculpture, paintings and even computer programs. It must […]

3D Printing and IPR

The three-dimensional or 3D printing service is different from the traditional way of manufacturing. In the 3D process, objects are created layer wise to get the desired three dimensional impacts. Since the inception of this latest idea in 1980s, it has gone through several changes in the technology used. This requires use of different production […]

For a music composer, lyricist, a producer, or any performer, protecting music is a big concern under the U.S. copyright protection laws. By copyright, it indicates legal protection that is offered to the original work of music of the creator from others to use it by their name. The copyright law shall prevent others from […]

US and India to join hands on the grounds of Intellectual Property Rights

After US President Donald Trump’s visit in India from February 24 to 25th February, India and the US have opted for an agreement relating to intellectual property rights or IPR. As a result of this, the cabinet sanctioned MoU with the US pertaining to IPRs, relevant to information and broadcasting as has been stated by […]

Evaluation Intellectual Property Rights

Intellectual property has always existed since the dawn of time but there were no laws in place for their protection. Intellectual property is intangible asset, be it music, creative writing, arts, discoveries, inventions and development of unique words, symbols and artwork. Intellectual property rights is a generic term that covers copyright, industrial design, trade secrets, […]

The Clash Of Jurisdiction Of CCI And TRAI

Overlapping Jurisdiction The Competition Act, 2002 read with section 18 of the legislation delegates to the Competition Commission of India (the “CCI”) the duty of “promoting and sustaining competition” in the Indian economy. This implies that the CCI will have principal jurisdiction to regulate conditions of competition in the relevant market of India. Whereas, Section […]