Songs v. Recorded Music, or Artists v. Labels

In my line of work, I do quite a bit of copyright consulting for my customers, many of whom are musicians. My approach to copyright registration is more "teach a man to fish" than "give a man a fish"; as an integral part of their careers, I think artists should be empowered to learn how to register and manage their copyrights. This is especially important if the artist later signs with a label or a publishing company, who may be administering the copyright on the artist's behalf. An artist needs to be able to read royalty statements and understand which copyrights are generating which type of income.

Tied to this, I frequently hit a road block when I talk to musicians about recorded music. Every piece of recorded music actually embodies two separate copyrights - one for the actual "song" and one for the actual "recording" or "master." For example, if you would like to record your own version of a song, you need only license the copyrights associated with the "song" itself, not the recording. However, if you wish to sample a bit of recorded music, you must license both copyrights associated with the "song" and the "master."

Enter the issue of contention between Artists and Labels: when an artist signs a recording agreement, they retain the copyrights to the songs (subject to any publishing agreement they may have signed), but any recordings made of the songs under the label belong to the LABEL. This is an unfortunate industry standard that very few artists have been able to avoid. Case in point: British artist Calvin Harris lashed out on Twitter when YouTube removed a music video of his song that he posted himself. The article cites that the copyrigt claim was most likely put forward by BPI, a representative for the recorded music industry. Recorded music = labels. I can totally understand why Calvin Harris is pissed off, but my assumption here is that he probably doesn't own the rights to the masters; his label does. This disconnect in copyright ownership creates inherent and added friction to the already strained relationships between artists and labels.

So how can we stop this? There needs to be a balance here. If the recording industry wants to keep the standard of owning masters (which I'm sure they do), they should be extending licenses back to artists to promote their recorded own work. Artists extend that right to labels by licensing their name and likeness for labels to use for promotional purposes, so license should be reciprocated. The idea that an artist can't post their own recorded music on a FREE site for their own promotional purposes is simply ludicrous. In this digitally driven world, there needs to be new and reasonable standards for labels. After all, in the words of Calvin Harris, "it's my fucking song you absolute bastards."