{"id":6382,"date":"2022-11-01T12:21:42","date_gmt":"2022-11-01T06:51:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalmusicinstitute.in\/?p=6382"},"modified":"2022-11-01T12:21:42","modified_gmt":"2022-11-01T06:51:42","slug":"in-sync-sandhya-surendran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalmusicinstitute.in\/v1\/in-sync-sandhya-surendran\/","title":{"rendered":"In Sync – Sandhya Surendran"},"content":{"rendered":"

As cliche as it may sound, the internet changed the world as we know it, especially for businesses and industries. What we have traditionally known and understood about the music industry has gone through a drastic change in the last decade, and it has everything to do with how music is being distributed and consumed today. The physical space of the music industry shrank post the compact-disc era and then blew up to become the global medium it is right now. When an artist releases a song today, they are not only releasing in their respective city, but technically to the whole world. When the world is your audience, it also means your revenue streams split wide open. What does this mean for the artist or the rightsholder? This article will hopefully throw some light on that, or at least, act as a starting point for further reading.<\/span><\/p>\n

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A song has three distinctly copyrightable aspects to it: the sound recording, the composition, and the lyrics. The ownership of the sound recording is referred to as master rights and the ownership of the composition and\/ or the lyrics (collectively referred to as the underlying works) is called publishing rights. If you are an independent singer-songwriter, you own all of the above, whereas if you\u2019re an artist signed up with a record label, and\/ or a publisher, these rights will be shared in such percentages as agreed to in your contract with these entities. Anyone having a stake in the copyright of a song is a \u201crightsholder\u201d.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As a rightsholder, there is a bundle of rights, both exclusive and assignable, that you are bestowed under copyright law, which allow you to monetize your work. This bundle includes the right to distribute, replicate, publicly perform and\/ or display, create derivative works and transmit or transfer the work. In exchange for monetary compensation, these rights can be assigned or transferred, or <\/span>even just given access to<\/i><\/b>. This access is the \u201clicense\u201d to, <\/span>a right to use<\/i><\/b>, your work, in exchange for which you are entitled to a sum of money, i.e. a royalty fee. Royalties are then further categorized based on the kind of use of the work in question, e.g. performance royalties, mechanical royalties and sync royalties.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tracing Roots<\/b><\/h3>\n

To better understand how royalties, a.k.a. revenue streams, work, we need to brush up a bit on what music licensing is. Music licensing is an old concept, perhaps now masked by new snazzy terms, but as far as the music industry is concerned \u2013 licensing lies at the heart of it. Licensing is intrinsically linked to publishing.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Music publishing existed even before the recording industry did, and of course, like copyright law, has its origins in Europe. We start with sheet music\u2013 a songwriter 100 years ago (give or take) would have written music in some physical form. If another musician were to play this songwriter\u2019s music, they\u2019d need to get permission from the songwriter. Now, this was obviously a tedious and cumbersome process. Enter-the publisher. Songwriters engaged \u2018publishers\u2019 who would (in the original sense of the word) publish the music, and for each copy made they would pay the songwriter a fee \u2013 the mechanical royalty. But it didn\u2019t end there! If you were purchasing this sheet of music from the publisher to then go perform elsewhere, there was a separate fee for that too \u2013 the performance royalty. Over a period of time, given the volume of publishers, and with the evolution of copyright law, collective management organizations (alternatively referred to as copyright societies or performing rights organizations) were set up to represent publishers, and consequently, songwriters too. These societies collected royalties on behalf of their members and distributed the collected royalties among the members. To read more about how collective management organizations work, click <\/span>here<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Fast forward to the 20<\/span>th<\/span> century, with the onset of technology and the birth of the recording industry, revenue streams for music also evolved. You now had a sound recording of a composition, and a separate copyright that existed in the sound recording. The broadcast industry \u2013 radio and television \u2013 led to a spike in music revenue, with film and television at the foundation of sync licensing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Indian Context<\/b><\/h3>\n

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In the Indian context, truth be told, copyright law is still playing catch up with global standards and a lot of that has to do with how our music industry is structured. Keeping aside Indian folk and Indian classical music, which weren\u2019t really considered part of the \u201cindustry\u201d in conventional terms, the Indian music industry was historically seen as a subset of the Indian film industry where majority of the music that was being distributed was created specifically as soundtracks to a film. This situation, therefore, also influenced ownership, determined who held the rights to musical works, and ultimately, how these works were distributed and monetized. As a result, copyright laws in India were interpreted according to these ownership models and did not protect the creator\u2019s long-term interests. Exploitative industry practices became the norm, where songwriters and composers assigned all rights and interest in their musical works for a fixed fee under the garb of \u201cwork for hire\u201d.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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But the 2012 amendment to the Indian Copyright Act changed the equation significantly and gave the songwriter and the performer economic rights in their original work, as opposed to only moral rights; including the right of an author to retain a minimum 50% of publishing rights. The amendment also led to the above-mentioned industry practices being challenged. With the internet disrupting conventional methods of music distribution and consumption, industry stakeholders are becoming a lot more cognizant of globally accepted fair industry practices and incorporating the same; perhaps not as quickly as one would hope for, but it is still a move in the right direction.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Given how outdated our copyright law is, India is still a long way from having standardized statutory thresholds that will ensure equitable compensation for artists, primarily due to the difficulty in implantation and execution. But it is only a matter of time before this situation is resolved \u2013 and technology is the key.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n