Music Information

If you want to use music for your website, in multimedia or traditional media productions you need to know about music licensing. Website designers, video makers, TV show producers and all other creative artists are constantly looking for music in their productions.

It’s important to understand what copyright means, how it applies to music, and how you can obtain the rights to use music for your production. Terms such as “royalty-free music” and “synchronization licensing” get tossed around loosely, and this adds to the confusion. Hopefully this mini-tutorial will shed some light on this.

A Tale Of Two Copyrights: Composition And Master

Copyright is intellectual property. If you own the copyright to something, it means, quite simply, that you have the right to decide who can make a copy. Copyright is the right to copy. Obviously it’s more complex than that but we’ll keep it basic for now.

In terms of music, the key thing to understand is that each recording of music actually includes two distinct copyrights:

1. The copyright in the song itself, or the musical composition, or simply the Composition. This means the rights in the words and music of a song, and is often referred to as the ‘Publishing’ rights. Think of an old-school songwriter sitting at a piano, writing music and lyrics to a song. That song exists before it is recorded. Often musicians (especially in electronic music and hip hop) have a hard time grasping this distinction because they write music while they are producing it – sitting at their computer. Copyright is formed when you write a song, by virtue of the fact that it is new and original and takes a graphic form, such as writing down the lyrics or doing a demo. The copyright in this Composition is owned by whoever wrote it.

2. The copyright in a sound recording, also known as the Master. The Master is a Recording of a Composition. The copyright to the Master is owned by whoever produced it. Often this is a record company. To illustrate this, think of a famous song such as “Georgia on my Mind”. Each record company that produces a version of that song owns their own recording (the Master), but the fundamental rights to the composition remain with the original composer, who owns the Composition – the copyright of the song itself.

Synchronization And Master Use Licenses

Normally, since there are two copyrights involved, two licenses need to be issued to make use of a recorded song:

1. Synchronization License: gives you the right to ‘synchronize’ the Composition with images or voice-over in your production.

2. Master Use License: this is exactly the same rights as the synchronization license, except it applies to the Master, the actual recorded interpretation of the musical composition.

Since the composer usually owns the Composition and the record company owns the Master, two different negotiations often have to take place, with two different contracts, for a song to be used in a Production. This can lead to complicated and time-consuming negotiations.

If a single company owns or controls the rights to both the Master and the Composition, this is called a One-Stop-Shop. This means that the company can sign both the Synchronization license and the Master Use license, which is less complicated and more attractive from the point of view of a website designer, an audio-visual show producer – or anyone who needs production music.

Most royalty free music libraries are such One-Stop-Shops since they control both the Master and the Compositions of the music on their website. Purchasing royalty free music means that once you have paid the one-time fee, you can use that music as many times as you want for as long as you want without ever having to pay additional money to the licensor.

It does not matter if one visitor or 100,000 visitors come to your website; or if the music is used for 3 months or 3 years – the purchase fee is exactly the same. If a piece of royalty-free music is purchased for use on a TV show, there is only the one-time fee, it doesn’t matter if the show is presented 5 times or 1,000 times. The TV show producer will never have to pay any additional fee for the music. This saves time and considerable expense.

Royalty free music does not mean however that anyone gives up their copyrights or their rights to administer a song. For instance, if you purchase a music license for a film project which goes on TV, the composer can still collect public performance royalties for the TV performance since these are paid by the broadcaster,and not by you the producer. The music may be offered on a royalty free basis but is not copyright free. The music composer and the publisher remain the copyright owners.

We hope this short article helps you understand the basics of music licensing.

Children with Attention Deficit Disorder often prefer to have background music playing when they are doing their school work or working. Parents are often worried that music will be yet another distraction that keeps these ADHD Kids from completing their work. Their fears may be unjustified. Music may actually be beneficial. There is not a medical consensus on the benefits of music and brain functions as of yet but new studies are pointing to A few specific brain benefits that may come to us from listening to music.

Remember the Mozart Effect? It was all the rage about 12 years ago. After my son was born in Georgia, we left the hospital with a Mozart CD. The nursing staff told us that the music would improve our baby’s brain function. The Governor of Georgia had determined that giving every infant born in Georgia a Mozart CD was a very inexpensive price to pay to make that Georgia infant a person with superior intelligence.

The Mozart Effect was a phenomena described in a book written by Don Campbell in 1997. The thesis of the book was that listening to Mozart would increase your IQ and your cognitive brain functioning. Much of the research in the book was based on work done by a French physician, Alfred Tomatis. Tomatis had treated over 10,000 patients using music and discovered that listening to Mozart improved spatial perception and language skills and decreased anxiety. Tomatis used Mozart music to treat these cognitive brain function problems but never claimed that the background music of Mozart would make you more intelligent. Campbells book sensationalized the benefits of listening to Mozart and Many mothers invested tons of money on ‘Baby Mozart’ CDs.

The Mozart Effect was suspect even before the book was published. Most psychiatrist and cognitive therapist considered the Mozart movement a fad and the research in the book came under serious scrutiny after the book was published. Almost immediately Some researchers set out to test the claims of the book. Most studies were performed and the vast majority of the studies were unable to show permanent changes in IQ or cognitive brain function improvements from listening to any music even Mozart’s. A few studies reported that any improvement in spatial perception, language skills or anxiety were transient and went away after the music stopped.

On a completely different note, it is interesting to me that we measure success of therapies such as behavioral therapy, music treatments and cognitive interventions by determining if the effects of the therapy persist after the treatment stops but we are happy to claim that drug treatments are a great success because they work while you are using them.

We would never say, “That medicine is simply worthless, you have to continue to take it to get continued benefits.” but if you undergo a cognitive training program and the effects do not persist six month after the program (even though there was considerable improvements while you were doing the program) then the interventions is considered a failure. It makes you appreciate how powerful therapies like diet, sleep hygiene programs and exercises are as their benefits are long lasting.

It seems that Mozart has been demonstrated to help people, animals and even plants while they are listening but the effects stop if you do not listen. Studies in France have confirmed that dairy cows that have Mozart piped into their stalls give more milk. In Japan, Mozart is played in breweries, near the yeast used to make sake, and the Japanese report that the quality of the sake is greatly improved by this music. In Some language courses offered by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Mozart is played because studies have found that language learning is improved when Mozart is piped into the classroom.

Musicologist theorize that the tempo and rhythm of Mozart is beneficial because it follows a pattern that the brain utilizes through auditory processing mechanisms to improve neurotransmission which in turn can improve signs and sympoms such as anxiety, language and spatial perception deficits..

Most people with ADHD prefer to work and Many ADHD Kids prefer to do their school work with music playing in the background. A recent study performed at the University of Dayton, found that background Mozart improved the accuracy of language processing and the speed of spatial processing. Though it is Mozart’s Sonatas that are reported to give the best cognitive effects, this study used 10 different Mozart pieces that were of the same tempo and showed similar effects.