Music, Sound Effects, Tech News, and More — The AudioMicro Blog

Suppose you and a friend sit down and compose a music masterpeice together?  Who actually owns the music?  Because you composed it together, both parties have some rights to the composition; however, there is way more to it than that.   Copyright Law states that the parties have created a “joint work” and when it comes to control, either party can deal “non-exclusively” with the “entire” work, so long as the other party is compensated.  This means that you can go and give all of the non-exclusive licenses that you want, as long as you don’t forget to give your writing partner his / her share (and they too can give out non-exclusive licenses).  

Now let’s make things a little more complicated.  Let’s say your in the studio and you write a groove and your buddy (John) sings over it.  Later on, you decide that his lyrics are really not helping out the track, and you want to take your music and find a better vocalist.  Can you do this without any obligation to John, your original partner?  The intuitive reaction is to think, that since you wrote the music, you should be able to get anyone you like to sing over it; however, because at the time of creation, your partner John sang over the work, you actually created a “joint work“, whereby you own half the music and John owns half the lyrics and vice-versa. 

Music copyright issues can become even more complicated of course, this post is just to serve as an example of a few of the issues at hand.