Key Of Grey

Photo courtesy of PugnoM

April 25th, 2009 – Master recordings are a huge cash cow for record labels. Until the very recent democratization of the music distribution model, record labels were the only ones who had the money and the reach to push an album to the top of the charts. Because of this power, they are able to sign artists to contract terms that are technically against the law, but since the artists are desperate to be signed, they’ll sign anything thereby making the terms valid.

I’m sure that it’s no surprise that some record labels will use nefarious techniques (like hiding terms of publishing, in two different sections) and as such, many artists have been bilked entirely out of all their master recording rights. As I’ve talked about before, there are really two different copyrights you should be concerned about when you release music: the copyright concerning the songwriting itself, and the copyright covering the actual physical recording of that song.

Since record labels basically front the money for artists to record professional sounding albums, they are concerned about keeping ownership of their investment. In Europe, parliament has voted to extend the master recording copyright from 50 to 70 years. This means that record labels will be able to continue gaining revenue from old master recordings. As it stands, most artists won’t make any money from this deal, it will be the record labels who reap the most rewards (unsurprisingly). If an artist was screwed out of their master recording in the first place, this means that they’ll have to wait another 20 years to get it back…more than the rest of their lives. Sounds like a bum deal to me since only powerful artists who can afford to buy back their own catalogues will be able to benefit from the change.

via MusicRadar