Owning Your Music Masters: Demystifying Artist Rights and Control

In the music industry, “owning your masters” is a phrase often thrown around, but what does it truly mean? For artists, understanding the concept of master ownership is crucial, as it significantly impacts their creative freedom, financial gain, and overall control over their music.

What are Music Masters?

Simply put, music masters are the original sound recordings of a song. These recordings include the final version of a song captured in a studio, encompassing the artist’s performance, instrumentation, mixing, and mastering. They are distinct from the musical composition itself, which falls under copyright protection as an intellectual property.

Why Owning Your Masters Matters:

Owning your masters grants you, the artist, a bundle of rights associated with the recordings, including:

  • The right to reproduce: This allows you to decide how and where your music is distributed (e.g., streaming platforms, vinyl pressing).
  • The right to distribute: You control where your music is made available for purchase or download.
  • The right to create derivative works: This includes authorizing remixes, covers, or other versions of your original recordings.
  • The right to receive royalties: You earn a portion of the revenue generated when your music is used, such as through streaming, downloads, or licensing for films or commercials.

Not Owning Your Masters:

When artists sign traditional record deals, they often give up ownership of their masters in exchange for upfront funding, production support, and distribution assistance. While this arrangement can be advantageous for launching a career, it means the record label retains ownership of the masters and controls the aforementioned rights.

Benefits of Owning Your Masters:

  • Creative Control: You have the final say over how your music is presented and distributed, ensuring artistic integrity.
  • Financial Gain: You reap the majority of the royalties generated by your music, potentially leading to greater long-term financial benefits.
  • Long-term Ownership: Masters remain your property, potentially appreciating in value over time and allowing you to pass them on as part of your legacy.

Challenges of Owning Your Masters:

  • Financial Investment: Independent artists need to cover recording, manufacturing, and distribution costs themselves, which can be a significant financial hurdle.
  • Marketing and Distribution: Establishing distribution channels and promoting your music independently requires additional effort and resources.
  • Legal Expertise: Navigating contracts and copyright complexities might necessitate legal counsel, adding to the costs.

The Decision:

Ultimately, the decision of whether or not to own your masters is a personal one that depends on your individual circumstances, career goals, and risk tolerance. Weighing the benefits and challenges carefully, alongside seeking professional guidance, can help you make an informed choice that aligns with your long-term vision as an artist.tunesharemore_vert

AI Generated Image Copyrights – Is It Really OpenAI?

The world of AI generated images and copyright ownership over the images created – is a very interesting world indeed. 

OpenAI Dall-E 2 images as the example: 

“To use DALL-E 2, you have to agree to OpenAI’s Terms of Use. According to these terms, OpenAI actually owns the images you create (which the Terms of Use call “generations”). OpenAI graciously grants you the right to sell your DALL-E 2 images (assuming you can somehow persuade someone to pay you for an image they can copy for free).

If that feels like the maker of the paintbrush telling Monet what he gets to do with his painting, that’s understandable.

To add insult to injury, OpenAI’s terms go further. Just to make it perfectly clear, you expressly assign any rights you might have in your image (whatever those might be) to OpenAI by contract. As the owner of the image, OpenAI can grant other people the right to reproduce, publish, or sell images that you create with DALL-E 2. You could find yourself in the position of walking into a store and seeing it selling your DALL-E 2 masterpiece on cheap T-shirts, and there would be nothing you could do to stop it.”

How much do companies pay for background music that accompany commercials or viral videos?

For a company to properly license a song they would need to get the sync license from the music publisher/writer of the song, pay a fee, and then obtain a license from the record company/owner of the sound recording itself.

This is exactly why Synchedin was created.

It solves the complexities of sync licensing and makes the process as easy as obtaining a Spotify subscription.

  • Unlimited commercial projects
  • Unlimited downloads
  • 1000s of known artists
  • Copyright control so no issues!
  • $4.99 per month

Should I Copyright my music before putting it on YouTube?

It’s not required.

Copyright for music is technically given automatically when you create the track. You don’t have to register it with any organisation across the world to “get the copyright”.

Thus, after creating a track I would look to release the track on YouTube, Soundcloud and into all music streaming services (which you can do for Free via RouteNote).

Do I Have to Join YouTube Partner Program (YPP) Before Being Able to Join a YouTube MCN?

Yes.

YouTube have recently changed their rules for YouTube MCN’s which means that all channels within the MCN’s need to be part of the YouTube Partner Program before they become eligible to be added to the MCN’s.

YouTube have been frequently changing the rules for MCN’s which is leaving a lot of channels up against it.