Building Your Career:

Contract and Compensation Basics for Composers

 

The following transcription has been modified for readability.

Joel Beckerman: Welcome! I’m Joel Beckerman. I’m a composer and the founder of your music your future. YMYF is a global education campaign by composers, for composers, and the point really is to help composers understand their choices in terms of compensation and the ramification of those choices, and overall to learn a bit more about the business side of the profession. so that’s why we’re around, so, thrilled to see so many of you guys could join today!

 

We will be taking questions across the duration of the webinar so please feel free to drop any questions in the Q&A section. And obviously we won’t be able to get to all the questions today but we’ll get to as many as we can. 

 

So, the focus today is on the legal aspects for music creators. We all spend our whole lives learning how to write music, and learning our profession, learning how to, you know, operate our gear and our daws and, you know, we invest a lot of money into this, we invest a lot of time, and energy, and effort to be the best that we can do in terms of being music creators. But we also need to know really everything that we can about music contracts. They determine how we get paid, they determine how much, and they determine what our rights are, so it’s critical to making a living and not just making music as a hobby.

So, I really congratulate all you’ve taken the step today, learning a little bit more about it and if you haven’t already, I encourage you to look through the whole of the YMYF website. it’s a lot of great information there. so again, the focus today is on copyrights and contract.

 

Let me just tell a little bit about Tal Dickstein, who is really amazing and is here to share his expertise with us and is volunteering his time to help out with your music your future.

 

So, Tal Dickstein is a partner with the law firm Loeb & Loeb, where he represents content creators and distributors, including music publishers, record labels, songwriters, and performing artists in litigation, pre-litigation counseling, and transactional matters. So, to say the very least he’s an expert in this field. So, Tal thanks very much for joining and maybe you can talk just a little bit about Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, who are partners in this project for us so Tal, I’m gonna throw to you.

 

Tal Dickstein [00:02:43] Sure, absolutely. Well thank you Joel, thanks so much for having me here. It’s fantastic to be able to speak with musicians, composers, songwriters, who, you know, make the music that we all love. You know I spend most of my days working with executives and lawyers at music publishers and record labels who are some fantastic, really bright, and energetic people. But it’s really great to be talking with creatives whenever I can, and try to pass on whatever knowledge I’ve gained, So, as you mentioned, I understand this program is being co-sponsored organized with Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, which is a tremendous organization. They’re based in New York. Their goal is to provide pro bono, so, free legal services for artists of all kinds who can’t afford legal representation of their own. And I’ve actually worked with and partnered with Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts for I think at least five or six years now and I’ve had an occasion to represent visual artists, photographers, documentary filmmakers, and musicians in a variety of legal disputes and legal matters. So, it’s a great organization for artists, you know, who are in need of legal representation, who can’t afford it on their own. So, with that, you know. I’m happy to just launch into the presentation. 

 

I have some slides set up here that I’ll, you know, flip through uh as we go along so I’ll just share my screen. Okay so there I am at Loeb & Loeb and what I want to start before I get into the substance of it, I do have to just put up this disclaimer that these opinions are not of my firm these are my personal opinions. This presentation is not, you know, for commercial purposes and it’s not intended to be legal advice. 

 

So, with that out of the way, I start always when I’m speaking to musicians, songwriters, composers talking about copyright and the reason for that is, the music business really is a copyright business. If you don’t understand what a copyright is, how it’s used, how it’s exploited, it’s very difficult to understand the streams of revenue that you that you want to be getting as a composer or songwriter to make a living. So, I start by, you know, just some basics. 

 

What is a copyright? Right, so a copyright is an exclusive right. It’s been known as a bundle of rights to do a number of things, and first thing is exclusive right to reproduce a work, right to make copies of it, to prepare derivative works. And for example, obviously we’re going to be talking a lot today about musical compositions, which are music and lyrics of a song. If you were to record a piece of music that’s actually a derivative work, if you’re going to make an arrangement of an original piece of music that’s also a form of derivative work. And so, the owner of a copyright in that original composition has the exclusive right to do that or to allow others to do that. 

 

Another exclusive right that you have as owner of copyright is to distribute copies or phono records of the work, and phono records is just sort of a fancy term that the Copyright Act uses to refer to any physical object that includes audio-only recordings of music. So, you know, a cd anything up to an mp3 file, a vinyl disk back in the day, these will all be types of phono records. A copyright gives you the exclusive right to publicly perform the work.

 

I should note although this may not be relevant for this audience which I understand is primarily composers and songwriters. But with respect to sound recordings, there is only a limited right of public performance in the United States. It’s only for digital audio transmission, so that would include things like interactive streaming, webcasting, essentially digital transmissions. There is no public performance right for sound recordings. For example, terrestrial radio, so when a song is played over the radio, the artist and the record label actually don’t get paid for that usage, and the same would be true for, you know, live performances such as a concert, bars and restaurants where music may be played.

 

A copywriter has the right to publicly display their work. Obviously, this applies primarily to visual works, which do include lyrics so, you know, for example, if your lyrics are put up on a website that displays them publicly, that could potentially infringe your exclusive rights.

 

Okay, next, what types of works can be copyrighted? And the copyright act lists a number of works of literary works, you know, books, novels, musical works. Obviously, as we’ve been talking about, that consists of music and lyrics, dramatic works, right, so a play of some type, Pantomimes, and choreographic works. You don’t see too many of those these days, but certainly they are, it can be subject to comfort protection, motion pictures and any other audio/visual works, right. So that would be, you know, any television program, a motion picture, television commercial, etc. 

 

And lastly, sound. Well actually, not last but not least, sound recordings, which is a recording of a particular performance of the musical work. And here it’s very important to recognize, as I’m sure many of you know, there is a separate copyright, a separate legal right in the underlying music, musical work, the music and lyrics, from the copyright in a sound recording. Which is a particular recording of the performance of that musical work. Now if you’re to exploit a sound recording, you actually need the permission of both the owner of the copyright and the sound recording, and, because embedded within the sound recording is a musical work, you also need the permission of a copyright owner of the underlying musical work. But they are entitled to separate copyright protection.

 

And I just want to note, I see Amy Lehman from the Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts has joined. I know she was having some technical difficulty earlier, but it’s great for you to be with us Amy.

 

Amy Lehman [00:09:13] Yes, thank you. I’m sorry about that. I’m late, but here now. 

 

Joel Beckerman [00:09:18] Thank you, Amy. While you’re here, if you don’t mind just taking a moment to sort of give a quick high level, but maybe you can talk a little bit more about Viola. And again, just to say we are so thrilled and grateful for you guys to make this evening possible and for your partnership. 

 

Amy Lehman [00:09:34] Absolutely, well thank you so much for putting this together, and we’re very excited to have the opportunity to talk, to all of your all of your members, and everyone who’s decided to join us today.

 

Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts is a nonprofit organization that was founded a little over 50 years ago now, to provide pro-bono legal services for low-income artists, and every artist who is interested in learning about their legal needs. We also have educational programming, like this one, as well, available for everyone. So, the main gist of our services is finding pro-bono lawyers to work with artists who need help with anything from forming a corporation to help with a dispute, to understanding a contract, to getting payment for their services, anything that’s related to their art. We can give them a consultation about that. We can place them with an attorney, provided they qualify as low-income. And otherwise, again we provide programming like this. You can go to our website, vladny.org, to see a lot more about the organization, and that’s it. I’ll put the name of the organization and our website in chat box so people can see it there.

 

Tal Dickstein [00:11:13] Thanks so much Amy. As I was just saying before, what a great time I’ve had, you know, representing a number of artists through VLA over the years. So, really terrific organization. 

 

Okay so, the last form of work that can be copyrighted architectural works. Okay, how is a work copyrighted? How did you get copyright protection for a work? Well actually, copyright subsists from the moment a work is fixed in a tangible medium of expression, that’s the language from the copyright act. So, what does that mean? So as soon as any creative work, you know, the kind we just looked at, literary works, musical, compositions, etc, as soon as they’re recorded in some fashion, it could be, you know, back in the day, it could be on a vinyl record, these days obviously most recordings are done digitally as soon as it’s captured in any medium that can later be replayed, there’s a copyright in that. You actually do not need to register a work with the US copyright office in order to gain protection. Again, it’s the moment you record something, you have a copyright in it. I should mention, as it correlates to that, anything that’s not recorded, so, for example, I think this recording, this presentation, may be being recorded now. But if it weren’t, my, you know, my speech, my comments, would not be subject to copyright, unless, you know, perhaps I wrote down notes or, you know, obviously, these slides would be subject to copyright, but my oral presentation would not, because it’s not actually recorded.

 

There are benefits, however, and this is very important for songwriters and composers to understand, there are some benefits to filing a copyright registration. You actually can’t file a lawsuit targeting an infringement or alleged infringement of your copyright until you have filed a registration for that work with the US copyright office. You don’t have to do it as soon as you create the work, but before you can go into court and claim that someone’s infringed your work, you do have to register your work with the US copyright office.

 

There are, I should also mention, some benefits for registering your copyright early, before you learn about an infringement, and that’s because if you register your copyright before infringement occurs, you can be entitled to enhanced damages. You’re entitled to something called “statutory damages” which is a range of anywhere from $750 up to $150 thousand per work that’s been infringed. The high end, of course, is where the information has been particularly willful, particularly egregious, and you can recover your attorney’s fees in an infringement action if you’ve registered your copyright before the infringement commenced.

 

Also, another misconception is that the copyright notice, so the “c” with a circle or sometimes you’ll see a “p” with a circle, which would typically denote a copyright in a musical composition, though neither of those are actually required in order to gain copyright protection, they were required several decades ago under the old law, but it’s not required anymore.

 

There is a minor benefit from including the copyright notice, which is why you’ll still see it from time to time, is that if you publish a work with a copyright notice, and someone infringes that work, they can’t claim that it was innocent infringement, and that really just serves to potentially lower damages that they could be responsible for in court. So, you know, including a copyright notice, it doesn’t hurt if you can add it. It could potentially help you if you have to seek damages for infringement.

 

Okay, so, who owns a copyright? The author, either one or multiple authors of a work, own the copyright and they can assign the rights in the work to a third party. Inherent this, of course, is that if multiple people work on a work together, and they intend their work to be joined, you know, an inseparable whole. For example, you know, if I wrote some lyrics, and Joel wrote music for a song, and we, you know, wanted to put them together, we would be co-owners of a copyright, and I could, you know, assign my rights in the song as could Joel, could assign or sell them to someone else, and then I would be a joint owner with somebody else.

 

It’s also important to note that you can assign not just your entire copyright, but any of the different exclusive rights of copyright. So, for example, if I wanted to assign just my right to reproduce the song, I could sell that, and, for example, retain the right to publicly perform it. Right, so, each of those rights that we went through earlier, those could be separately assigned or sold. 

 

So, an important exception to this principle that an author or authors of a work owned a copyright from the moment it’s created is a concept known as “work for hire,” and there the “employer,” and I have “employer” in quotes because sometimes it’s not the traditional employer, and I’ll get into that, but someone who essentially is directing or paying for the work to be created, they will be considered the owner of the work from inception. So, the actual author, the person who created the work, won’t be considered the author, won’t be the owner of the copyright at all.

 

And so, there are two ways, really, under the current copyright act, that a “work for hire” can be created. The first instance is where work is prepared by an employee within the scope of their employment. So that’s, you know, a pretty straightforward example. You know, I work for a law firm. If I, you know, wrote a legal brief and I wanted to claim copyright in it, I probably wouldn’t be able to do that. It would be owned by my employer, by the law firm.

 

The second way that a “work for hire” can be created is if it’s a specially ordered commission work for use as part of a motion picture, a contribution to a collective work, a supplementary work, a compilation, and some other types of work that are not really relevant here, if the parties expressly agree in writing.

 

Right, so, let’s unpack that a little bit, because I think this is important, because it does come up from time to time with songwriting or composing, so it has to be a special-order commission work right, so, let’s say a documentary filmmaker says, “hey I want to, you know, create some music specifically for my motion picture.” Okay, you’ve satisfied that. It’s being used as part of a motion picture, okay you’ve satisfied that. You don’t have to worry about the other factors, and if the parties expressly agree in writing, right, so, the film producer has to have a written agreement with the composer that says the composer is doing this work as a work for hire, work made for hire. It’s fairly straightforward language, I’m sure most folks have seen that in contracts. Basically, just says, you know, this work is being created as a work made for hire under the Copyright Act. 

 

You know, it can be pretty simple, and if you satisfy all those three things, it will be considered a work for hire. The person who commissioned the work will own the copyright from inception.

 

A question I often get is, “well, what about compositions or songs, you know, not written for a motion picture but just, you know, let’s say, for an album, you know, more traditional popular songwriter. Could that be considered a work made for hire under the second prong?”

 

That’s actually an unsettled issue, a question of law. Right now, there are a series of lawsuits that are making their way through the courts to determine whether, you know, writing a song for an album, let’s say, could be considered a contribution to a collective work or for part of a compilation. So that’s a little bit of an unsettled area of the law, but definitely something to keep in mind.

 

Okay, so, why should you care? Why does it matter if a work is considered a work made for hire? So, as I said before, the employer will own the work and they, you know, have the right to use it or license it as they see fit. In some cases, even if a songwriter/composer creates a work as a work made for hire, they’ll retain what’s known as the “writer’s share of public performance income,” and that’s a very important stream of royalty income that songwriters and composers can receive, you know, for years after they create the work.

 

So-called “back-end royalties” that can be very important to many songwriters and composers. So, if the agreement provides that the songwriter or composer will be entitled to their writer’s share of public performance income, they can receive that. But it’s not always the case when it comes to work made for hire.

 

Another important distinction for works made for hire is that the songwriter/composer, they lose the right to regain ownership later on, and this arises under what’s called a “termination provision” of the US Copyright Act and the purpose for that is, congress, when they passed the copyright law, they said, “okay there are a lot of creators out there that, you know, maybe just starting out and they don’t really know how valuable their works are, right? They’re not, you know super popular, they don’t have a great track record of earning money from their songs, so they might, you know, sell the rights to their songs, or whatever work it may be, for a relatively modest amount. But then, turns out it’s a pretty successful song, and a lot of money is made on that,” and what congress wanted to do is say “all right, we want to give these creators, these songwriters or composers, essentially another bite of the apple, a way to regain those rights later on, once the true value of the work has been discovered.”

 

And so, there are two ways that copyright owners/creators can regain those rights. The first, this is just because the change in the law in 1978 is for grants of rights made after 1978, those grants can be terminated after 35 to 40 years. So, we’re certainly, you know, within the window or, actually now, coming up beyond the window for some grants in those instances, and there are a lot of other technical requirements for termination that I don’t really have time to get into now. But it’s just important to note that if you sign a work made for hire agreement, you lose the right to regain the copyright under these this provision, and a corollary to this for grants of works created before 1978, they can be terminated 56 to 61 years after copyright was originally secured. So important thing to consider when deciding whether to create a work as a work made for hire.

 

Okay, how long does copyright protection last? It’s actually a pretty long period of time for works created after 1978. They last for the life of the author, plus 70 years. So, that can be a pretty long time, and something obviously inherent in this is that copyright protection will last beyond the life of the author. So, you know, there are many heirs and descendants of famous musicians and creators who actually can support themselves, or at least, you know, get a pretty sizable check in the mail, based on the royalties of their descendants, or I should say of their parents or grandparents. 

 

So, important to remember for anonymous works, suit anonymous works, or works made for a hire, here’s that exception. Again, the duration of copyright protection is 95 years from publication, or 120 years from its creation, whichever expires first. So, it’s a little different when you have those types of works, you know, just as a rule of thumb, what I frequently tell people is that any work published in or before 1926 is now in the public domain. It’s not subject to copyright protection. That’s because of the, you know, the 95 years from publication rule.

 

For older works created before 1978, there was actually a two term of copyright, one first a 28-year term that ran from publications, we had to have copyright notice before 1978, you had to have a “c” with a circle and then it was filed. But followed by a 67-year renewal term so you add that together you get the 95 years from publication for works made after1978.

 

Okay, getting, you know, more into some issues that I think are more directly relevant to songwriters and composers, this is a chart that I put together to try to understand the various types of licenses and exploitations of those kinds of works and how you know who’s responsible for collecting the money.

 

Right, how do you get paid? Right, which isn’t sure. What everyone is ultimately interested at the end of the day, so, in this chart there are three different types of licenses that I’ve listed. There on the left, you’ve got a public performance license, and that is necessary and covers kind of what it sounds like. Any public performance of a musical work, or could be a sound recording, and that would be, for example in a live concert, you know, a bar that plays music, either recorded or live performers, restaurants, same thing, cable television, right, so, anytime a television program or a movie that has music in it, anytime that’s played over the network, there’s a public performance that takes place there. Similarly, video streaming services like your Netflix, you know, Amazon video, radio, as well as non-interactive music streaming. So that’s essentially, you know, the Pandora’s of the world, where you don’t get to choose precisely what song you want to listen to, sort of internet radio. 

 

Okay, and then how is that money or how is that right licensed and how is it collected? So, a songwriter or a composer, they own their own copyright. They can certainly enter a direct license, they could, you know, go to a television station, radio station, a live concert venue, a bar, restaurant, they could say, “I want to license my work to you for use at your establishment or on your network.” That’s very rare, as you can imagine, for one, you know, songwriter or composer to go around the world and try to license that to all the various music users out there, would be very difficult, and, so, there are organizations known as “performing rights organizations” or “PROs.” And the prime examples of those are ASCAP, BMI, CISAC, and GMR, which will, if you, as the songwriter or the songwriter’s music publisher affiliates with those pros, the pros will then go out and license the various bars, restaurants, you know, cable television networks, etc, collect money from them, and then, through a formula that they have, distribute money to the songwriter or their respective publisher, and the publisher will then pay the songwriter.

 

So that’s how public performance income works. The next type of license is a mechanical license, and a mechanical license covers the reproduction of an audio-only piece of music, a non-dramatic musical work, and so, like I said before, example of that would be reproducing a song in a cd, a vinyl record, a download is also considered mechanical use, requiring mechanical license, as is interactive streaming, so where you get to choose what song you want to listen to, you know, for example, from Spotify, these also. 

 

Mechanical license can be licensed directly by a songwriter or a music publisher, but it’s certainly more common that there are sort of clearinghouses that have been set up to license mechanical uses. And I should mention, for mechanical licenses, there’s actually a compulsory license, under the copyright statute, meaning that, you know, the Spotify’s of the world, they want to interact the streaming of a particular song, as long as that song has been publicly released in some fashion, they have the right, without obtaining permission from the copyright owner, to go off and exploit that work, you know, through the interactive streaming, as long as they pay a predetermined license fee.

 

And there’s a copyright royalty board within the copyright office that determines the amount of royalty that they’re going to pay for that. But there still are intermediaries, organizations that will process these compulsory mechanical licenses. One is the “Harry Fox Agency,” known as HFA. Music Reports does something similar, and just this year, I should say, late last year, there’s an organization known as the “Mechanical Licensing Collective” which was set up through the copyright office to collect what’s known as a “blanket license” for digital music providers.

 

So again, the Spotify’s of the world, they can they no longer have to get a license for each specific song that they want to use, they can apply to the MLC to get a blanket license for all the musical works that they want to use, and they’ll pay the calculated royalty to the MLC. The MLC will then distribute the royalties to music publishers, or to songwriters or composers directly if they’re not working with a music publisher.

 

And lastly, the last type of license here is a synchronization license. And a synchronization license is needed whenever a musical work or a sound recording is being used in an audio-visual work. So, any type of recorded television, again, as this distinct from live television, which we talked about which we spoke about earlier, through public performance licenses. You know, a movie which clearly require a synchronization license to extend it includes any type of music television commercial, as well as a concert video, and if any recorded medium that includes both video and audio would need a synchronization license. So here there actually is no clearinghouse organizations set up to license synchronization rights or collect royalty, these are done on an individual direct licensing basis.

 

Right, so, for example, a film producer wants to, you know, have a particular song in their film, they’ve got to go to the songwriter or the composer or, more likely, the music publisher that represents that songwriter or composer, and say, “okay I want to include this piece of music in my movie but let’s do a deal.” And then, they’ll pay royalties through the publisher. There’s not a clearinghouse that collects that type of income.

 

Okay, so what are some key terms that we commonly see in songwriter/composer agreements? So, clearly, it’ll have to address the type of use, right, is this song or composition going to be used in a movie, a motion picture, a soundtrack album, a television program, a tv commercial, merchandise, etc. Generally, you know, the more popular or prominent the use is going to be, the more consideration, the more money the licensee will typically pay to the licenser.

 

Okay, what type of rights are being granted? Is this just, you know, a one-time license for one particular use, you know, you can use my song in your motion picture, but otherwise I retain the copyright in that song? Or is it what’s known as a buyout? And a buyout is when the licensee essentially acquires the copyright in total, right, so they can then do whatever they want with that song or whatever the particular work is, and the author, you know, will get paid, presumably, but they no longer have the right to use that song in any other use in the future.

 

All right, clearly, you know, what the method of compensation is going to be is, it going to be a lump sum payment? Will the songwriter/composer be reimbursed for expenses? That’s more typical when, for example, a composer is scoring a film, you know, sometimes there’ll be a provision for reimbursement of expenses. Will they be paid in advance? Which is just the payment up front, which is then recouped against royalties in the future.

 

So, you know, for example, if you get an advance of a hundred thousand dollars, and you’re entitled to royalties on the back end, you won’t see any of those royalties until those royalties have added up to a hundred thousand dollars. So, essentially, the licensee’s recovering their investment by paying out the advance, and then beyond that you’ll receive ongoing royalties.

 

All right, what’s the term of the use? Is it going to be perpetual? Will the licensee have the right to use the work forever or will be limited to a term of years or months? What’s the territory? Where can the licensee use the work? You know, typically, where there’s a license, for example, for a motion picture, or a television program, the licensee, the producer, is going to want worldwide rights, you know, unless it’s something that, you know, they expect only will be shown or broadcast in the United States or a specific jurisdiction.

 

Just a couple other terms that you commonly will see in these types of agreements, particularly for songwriter agreements, sometimes you’ll see “exclusive songwriting services agreements,” meaning that the songwriter is agreeing, for a certain period of time, it could be, you know, months or years, that any songs they write during that time period is going to be owned exclusively by the licensee. That a lot of times publishing agreements you’ll see that, where the music publisher signs a songwriter and says, “okay, I know you’re going to write ‘x’ number of songs over the next four or five years, whatever you write during that time period, I’m gonna own those, I’m gonna have rights to those.”

 

Who would have creative control over the product? You know, typically for music created for television or a movie the producer is going to want to have, you know, a say in what the music is, how it feels. You know, they’ll have the ability to make changes if they want, you know, and even in music publishing agreements, the publisher typically will, there’ll be a clause in there that says the publisher has the right to determine if this is a commercially saleable composition right up to certain standards, which, you know, can be subject to debate. But at least there’s that protection there for the music publisher.

 

Credit can be an important thing. Right, is the composer or songwriter could be credited in the motion picture? How will they be credited, right? Or in a tv show, will it be in the beginning or the end credits? How large will it be? That kind of thing.

 

Okay, I have a couple slides here on policing infringement, and this is gets into the scenario where, if you own your copyright, and you see someone else using your work in some fashion that you have not authorized, right, what can you do about it? And certainly, the place where we see this most often these days is online, right. 

 

There’s an important statute that was passed actually over 20 years ago, called the “Digital Millennium Copyright Act,” that last century, that was meant to sort of regulate liability for copyright infringement that happens online. So generally, and there’s a lot of detail here, but just to give you an overview, the DMCA protects online service providers. So that could be any organization that runs a platform such as YouTube, TikTok, or an internet service provider like Verizon or Comcast or Cablevision. It protects them from liability for any infringement on their systems based on material that was posted by their users. So, this is essentially for user-generated content.

 

Now, what does the DMCA provide? Copyright owners can send what’s called a “takedown notice” to these service providers, identifying the infringing content that’s on their system and copyright owner has to certify that they have a good faith belief that this use is not authorized, and it constitutes an infringement. And if they send that notice, known as a “DMCA take down notice,” the service provider has to, quote, “expeditiously remove the infringing content and provide notice to the user who posted the content.” So, it’s actually a pretty easy way to get infringing content taken down from the internet.

 

There is a huge debate brewing as to whether the DMCA is functioning properly. These service providers complain that they’re getting inundated with takedown requests, they can’t possibly process them all in a timely manner. A lot of copyright owners and, you know, their representatives, argue that, well, we send the takedown notice for one posting of our song or our work, whatever it may be and then, you know, minutes later, another post pops up with the same material. So, it’s sort of a game of whack-a-mole to keep down infringed content, so there’s sort of a raging debate surrounding this. But, at least for specific instances of infringement, this is a way to pretty quickly and efficiently take down unauthorized uses.

 

I should mention that if, when the copywriter sends a take-down notice, and then the service platform notifies the user, right, that their post has been flagged as infringement, the user has the right to send a counter notice saying, “hey, no, I have the right to post this.” They may argue they have a license, or it’s something called fair use, which we don’t have time to get into but that’s the defense to copyright infringement. And in that case, the server service provider has to restore the content in 10 to 14 days, unless the copyright owner files a lawsuit in federal court.

 

The last, I think this is one of my last slides, again on policing infringement. There’s another way besides, you know, bringing a lawsuit in federal court, which can be quite expensive. There is a way that creators will have to assert claims against unauthorized uses, and this is what’s being called the copyright small claims court. It was passed, actually, late last year as part of the Case Act, and essentially what it does is it creates a copyright claims board. It’s sort of like a small claims court within the copyright office that will hear claims of copyright infringement, a declaration of non-infringement.

 

Let’s say, you know, you use a little piece of someone else’s music, and they come after you saying, “hey you infringed my work.” You want someone to decide, “hey, no, I was allowed to use it, it’s only a small amount, etc,” you can bring that type of claim before this copyright claims board, as well as this board can also hear claims for fraudulent DMCA takedown notices.

 

Right, so, if I try to get a posting from YouTube taken down, claiming that I own the song that’s used in that in that video, but I don’t actually own it, right, that would be a fraudulent take-down notice, and then the person whose work was taken down could bring a claim against me, and those claims could be heard by this copyright small claims court.

 

This is designed to be a cheaper, you know, more efficient way of resolving infringement and related disputes. So, you know, you don’t have to have an attorney. You can actually bring the claim yourself, or you don’t have to have an attorney defending you, if the claim is asserted against you. Discovery is a little bit less limited, you know, there’ll be some exchange of documents. But I think depositions are generally, won’t be taking place, so that cuts down the cost, and the hearings are conducted remotely. 

 

Another benefit to the small claims court is that you only have to apply for copyright registration before you bring a claim. If you recall, I mentioned a little while ago that, for claims brought in federal court, you have to actually secure a copyright registration from the copyright office, and it can take, you know, a period of months to get that registration. So, until you have that, you wouldn’t be able to bring a lawsuit in federal court, but you can bring a claim in the copyright small claims court.

 

You know, per the name, small claims court, the amount of damages you can recover is limited to fifteen thousand dollars per work, or thirty thousand dollars per proceeding. That, you know, is certainly much less than what you can potentially recover in federal court, where you can get statutory damages of up to $150,000 if there’s been willful infringement, or you can recover in federal court actual damages, right, so, whatever the profits were made off of your work, you can potentially recover that in federal court.

 

Here in the small claims court, it’s a capped amount, and I should mention also it’s an optional proceeding, so, a defendant, someone who’s accused of infringing a work in the small claims court, has 60 days to opt out. It’s, you know, sort of voluntary, and, in which, case if they do opt out, the claim could then be filed in federal court. And because this law was just passed at the end of last year, it’s not going to go into effect until December of this year. That’s when they’re scheduled to start hearing cases. It may be postponed slightly after that.

 

Okay, so I think, with that, I’m going to just head to some tips that I put together for songwriters and composers based on some of the discussion we’ve had. The first tip that I always tell, you know, clients, especially folks just starting out in the music business is always to get it in writing.

 

Right, if you write a song for somebody, or you score a motion picture, or a tv show, and you don’t have any agreement as to, you know, what compensation you’re entitled to, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. You know, you could potentially bring a lawsuit against the licensee or the person who used your work, and say, “I’m entitled to some portion of proceeds there,” but how do you determine that it’s going to be very costly to bring a claim, to hire a lawyer. You really want to get these agreements, all the terms of your agreement spelled out in writing, including work for hire.

 

You know, as I mentioned earlier, if there’s no agreement specifying that a work is created as a work made for hire, it won’t be considered work for hire. You do need that specific language in in the agreement, unless it’s an employment relationship, in which case it’s by default a work made for hire. 

 

There’s a thing called “cue sheets” which is essentially the document that lists for, you know, a television show or a movie, what music appears at what time. So, there are little time codes on the cue sheet, and so, for each time period it’ll say, you know, what’s the name of the music, perhaps who wrote this music, and, you know, who’s the songwriter, who’s entitled to royalties from it. 

 

And the reason that’s important is because those cue sheets will then go to the PROs, the performing rights organizations, I’ve mentioned earlier, and those PROs will use the cue sheets to decide, okay, which songwriters, composers, music publishers are going to get a piece of the royalties for the public performance income that’s derived from these, you know, television shows or movies that are shown online. 

 

Split Sheets. Split sheets are basically a short form document that explains when you have multiple songwriters working on one song, or multiple composers working on a piece, who owns what part, right, it could say, you know, we split 50 50, you know if you’ve got five or six, seven songwriters, so someone may have, you know, 8.3%, there are always to split this up. It is very important to have a split sheet, something in writing showing what percentage you own. It avoids disputes down the line between the songwriters as to what share they should each get, and it makes it easier for songwriters to register their works with the PROs to say, you know, “listen, I have, here’s a document where the co-writers have agreed I own, you know, “x” percent of the song, and so I should be getting “x” percent of the public performance income from the song.

 

Second tip that I like to give folks is to make sure to register your works right. Either you can do it yourself if, you know, you educate yourself a bit on how this works, or you work with a music administrator or a music publisher, they can do this for you. First, you know, you want to register your work with the copyright office. As I said earlier, it entitles you to enhanced damages and attorney’s fees if you have to bring a lawsuit. You want to register your writer’s share of public performance income with the PROs, you know, if you’re entitled to that under whatever agreement you’ve entered with the producer, you want to register that so that you get that public performance income down the line, known as the back-end income mechanical rights. 

 

As I mentioned, there’s this Mechanical Licensing Collective, the MLC, that’s going to administer mechanical licenses for digital music providers. You want to register your works with them, so you can get paid by them for music for mechanical uses. 

 

And then lastly for, you know, for artists, for performing artists, which is, you know, I don’t know how relevant that is to this group, but they want to make sure they register their rights with Sound Exchange, which is an organization that collects royalties for digital uses of sound recordings in the US, as well as with SAG/AFTRA, in the case of non-featured artists who collect income for those same types of uses.

 

And so, with that, I think that brings me to the end. I know I’ve gone overtime, but Joel was very polite and did not interrupt me. So, I apologize for going over but, with that, you know, I’m happy to answer any questions. 

 

Joel Beckerman [00:46:39] Yeah, so first of all Tal, that was amazing. I’ve listened to a lot of these presentations before and I’ve been part of it, and honestly that’s probably the most cogent, simple way that I think I’ve ever heard this stuff brought forward. So, thank you so much for this, on behalf of the whole community.

 

So, I just want to tell everybody a couple things. First of all, there’s a million questions and I’m trying to pull these together against, you know, really focusing on the ones that are simplest to answer, so, again, I’m gonna do my best to get through as many of these as we can.

 

First, I thought one clarification which was a really good one is this is, correct me from wrong, Tal, but I think the vast majority of we’re talking about today is US, not [outside] US, so if you can just talk about how [outside] US is different than US and different places around the world in terms of copyright law.

 

Tal Dickstein [00:47:32] Yeah, sure, absolutely, so I think the most important distinction that I see between US and [outside] US actually relates to sound recordings. And I mentioned, in the United States, there’s only a limited public performance right for sound recordings; only for digital audio transmissions, right, so, for those internet streams/downloads there is a right to collect on the sound recording there. I should say, in the United States, there’s no right to collect on terrestrial radio, AM, FM, or for, you know, bars, restaurants, etc. 

 

Outside the US there is generally a sound recording right for those types of uses, for live performances, for terrestrial radio, they’re commonly known as “neighboring rights,” is the term that’s it’s often used to refer to that. And so, collection societies outside the US will collect those. 

 

The one caveat is that if it’s a US artist, because we’re talking about sound recording rights now, if it’s US artists, the foreign collection societies typically do not pay. My understanding is they do not pay to US artists because the United States is not collecting those types of, you know, sound recording royalties for artists outside the United States, so there’s that kind of reciprocity there.

 

Another, you know, important thing to mention is that, and a reason why it’s important to register with the PROs, and this is now going to the musical composition side, so, you know, speaking directly to songwriters and composers, it’s important to register with the PROs because they have affiliations with organizations around the world, with other collection societies, you know, in Europe, in Asia, in Africa, and so, if a work is performed in wherever it may be in the world, the particular collection society in that country or that territory will, you know, receive the income. They’ll see that it’s, if all the ownership information is properly documented, they’ll see that this is a work that was created by an American composer. They’ll pay the money over to ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, you know, United States PRO, and the PRO will then pay that money to the composer here in the United States. So, I hope that addresses at least some of the distinction between US and non-US exploitations. 

 

Joel Beckerman [00:50:10] Yeah it is complicated, there’s a lot to it in terms of, you and I were talking before about how the laws in each area of the world can be very different copyright law. So, just a couple of, I want to try to pull it in for some folks, just to kind of maybe ground the conversation, that we can go out to some of the specific questions.

 

So, Tal, you were talking about composers and songwriters, can we just talk about typically what rights do songwriters hold on to, and what’s the disposition of their copyrights, and for composers, what’s the disposition of their copyrights, and what sources of income they have typically.

 

Tal Dickstein [00:50:53] Sure. So, starting with composers, if it’s someone writing, if let’s just say, scoring a film or a television program, typically they’re going to enter a work-for-hire type of agreement, right, a television producer or film producer is going to want to have 100 percent of the rights to do whatever they want with the film. 

 

You know, it may be, now, if it’s a very popular composer, it’s possible that the composer could get some back-end income, right? They could still retain the so-called writers share of public performance income. And so, in that case, they would be able to register their works with the PRO and collect the public performance royalties down the line. But generally, the composer is generally not going to retain a copyright interest in their work if it’s being included in a motion picture. Certainly, the score of the motion picture, generally the copyright will be owned by the producers.

 

When it comes to songwriters, we’re talking about generally, like, popular music that we hear all the time, it kind of runs the gamut, actually. I would say, you know, up to a couple of decades ago, I think the typical practice was that new and up and coming songwriters would sign away their copyright interests to, let’s say, a music publisher who’s going to sign them and then place their music into recordings or wherever else it may be used. You know, the music publisher will become the owner of the copyright and then they would either pay the songwriter in advance, which gets recouped against royalties, or just a royalty stream down the line. Like, a percentage of whatever income the publisher collects would go to the songwriter as a royalty. 

 

I think nowadays it’s probably more common for songwriters of all different experiences to retain their copyrights. There’s something called a “Co-Publishing Agreement” where both the music publisher, who is going to go out and license the work, right, to try to commercialize, it as well as the songwriter are going to share a copyright in the song, that could each have 50 percent, for example, and that gives both of them some control over the work. And typically, those agreements also, they may last indefinitely, they may be for a certain period of years, in which case, let’s say, you know, after a 10-year term, the songwriter will regain 100 percent of their copyright and they can go off and do what they want with it. 

 

Unless, I should mention, there’s also something called the “Administration Agreement” that songwriters can enter into where a music publisher doesn’t own any piece of the work. They simply are out there to try to commercialize it, to license it, and maximize the revenue that’s earned on the work. And they’ll typically keep something on the order of like 10 or 15 percent is a common and administrator fee and then pay the remainder of that to the songwriter, to the copyright owner. 

 

Joel Beckerman [00:54:05] That’s great. So, if I just kind of consolidate this and sort of bottom line it, what I’m hearing you say is that composers generally don’t retain their copyrights. Songwriters generally do. But what about in the case of writing a song specifically from film or television? What have you seen that, sort of, is more typical? 

 

Tal Dickstein [00:54:26] Yeah, you know, again, I think it depends and I hate to say that, but there’s such a variety of circumstances out there. My sense is that if it’s really established songwriter, you know, someone with good name recognition, they have more negotiating clout where they could potentially recover or retain, I should say, the copyright ownership. If it’s someone that is less well known, it’s going to be more typical that it’ll be a work for hire arrangement where the producer will own the copyright. 

 

Joel Beckerman [00:55:02] Got it. So, can you just talk about this? This is specifically related to Composers: can you talk about the differences between work for hire, direct license and buyout; in terms of how in terms of what composers can collect, in terms of income, can you just kind of lay that out for everybody? 

 

Tal Dickstein [00:55:21] Yeah, sure. So, if it’s if it’s a straight Buy-Out, meaning they’ve given up their copyright entirely, they’re typically not going to be entitled to anything. Right, and the contract language should spell this all out. Right, whether they retain any right to collect income on the work or not. Typically, if it’s a buyout, they’re getting paid a lump sum up front in exchange for giving up ownership of the copyright in their work. And so, they’re not going to be entitled to money on the back end.

 

In a work for hire situation, it may be a little bit more common that the song, the composer, excuse me, is entitled to register the work with the PRO, so that they would be entitled to the writer’s share of public performance income. And maybe I should just clarify, when I say writer’s share, typically, let’s just say this: one-hundred dollars of public performance income, you know, that collects typically 50 percent of that, fifty dollars, would be called the publisher’s share. So, the publisher will collect that, and another 50 percent will go to the writer’s share. 

 

Now, that can get divided up further, right? That’s just sort of the default. So, you could have a provision, even in a work-for-hire agreement, that says the producer, or the publisher, or whoever is acquiring the rights will get the publisher’s share, plus 50 percent of the writer’s, right, so that the writer only gets half of the writer’s share. So, twenty-five percent of a whole. 

 

Or it could go the other way. You know, that, potentially, a songwriter could be entitled to 75 percent of all public performance income. So, their 50 percent writer’s share and 50 percent of the publisher share. So, it can get worked up in all different kinds of ways. And I think there was one more example was that publishing agreement I did the buyout and the work for Direct License and work-for-hire. 

 

Tal Dickstein [00:57:16] Right. So, a direct license. I think that can take a lot of different forms. I think typically that will be, all right, I have a song, I’m licensing the song to you, film producer, TV producer, for use in this one show. It may be limited to a certain period of time, it may not be, but I think more often there, the songwriter is going to get a royalty income stream from that. Right. So, it’ll be some flat fee, you know, for a period of time. It could be a percentage of income, although I think that’s a little bit less common. 

 

Joel Beckerman [00:57:55] So I think music libraries tend to be more on the direct license area. Is that fair to say, Tal, that composers who are composing for a specific project either go under work for hire, being able to collect their performance royalties or a buyout when they cannot collect their performance royalties? Is that a fair way to sum it up? 

 

Tal Dickstein [00:58:17] Yeah, I think that’s right. 

 

Joel Beckerman [00:58:18] Okay. Let me see if I can play speed round here, because there’s so many great questions. I just want to make sure we got those questions to sort of ground us. So let me see. You can play the speed round here, so we can get to as much as we can.

 

Are musical score copyrights for video games the same as musical score copyrights for film?

 

Tal Dickstein [00:58:41] Well, they would both require a synchronization license, right, any time that you use a piece of music in connection with a video of any kind, there needs to be a sync license. So that would have to be directly licensed, in that sense. I mean, the terms could certainly be different, but the same type of license.

 

Joel Beckerman [00:59:00] Somebody asked, because you’re talking about interactive streaming, what’s an example of an interactive stream? 

 

Tal Dickstein [00:59:08] Sure, it’s very simple. That’s just when the user gets decide what song they’re going to listen to. Right. So essentially with Spotify, my best example, where you get to say, all right, you know, I want to listen to Bob Dylan, so I’m going to have to listen to recently or a particular song, that’s called Interactive, Non-interactive is essentially just passive audio, passive Internet radio. 

 

You can have a situation where the user gets to choose like the genre. So, for example, Pandora let’s you say, I want to create a Bob Dylan station, where you play other artists like that. That still counts as non-interactive because the user is not selecting specifically what song they want, even if they are in the genre. 

 

Joel Beckerman [00:59:54] So, is there, this is a two-parter, is there a resource for composers to find basic contract templates for licensing work-for-hires? And then the second part of that question is, really, how do I know what a fair deal is? How do I know? So, again, it’s contract templates and how do I know if I’m getting a fair deal? 

 

Tal Dickstein [01:00:17] Yeah, great question. You know, as an attorney, I’m always reluctant to tell people to Google it, to look for contract language that way. You know, if you’re looking for basic work-for-hire language, you can probably find language that will work, that will work just fine. You know, on the Internet.

 

I’m trying to think of there any particular resources. There are some, some of the PROs may have some language to that effect on their websites. The copyright office may have, they put out some pretty good circulars that describe, you know, what work-for-hire is, what rights a songwriter composer has in their work. Copyright office might be a good place to check for that, for a sort of a standard language. 

 

Second part of the question, what’s a fair deal? How do you know if you’re getting a fair deal? So that’s a, you know, it’s a really hard question to answer. It’s going to depend on so many factors like, how prominent is the is the creator? What’s the use that its being put to? What’s the duration? And all the factors that I, kind of, went through in terms of the typical terms, provisions, that you’ll see in an agreement.

 

Look, I think as with anything else in life, it’s good to just check your network, to speak with other songwriters. If there are any lawyers that who do these types of transactions on a regular basis, they’ll have a good sense of what typical terms would be and be able to advise, you know, if this is a fair deal or not. You know, music managers can often provide that kind of advice. You know, if it’s a one-off question, they might be happy to speak with you just for a short period of time and just give you a gut check on whether they think it’s a fair deal. 

 

Joel Beckerman [01:02:11] So I think that’s a really great, just to underline this point, a lot of composers and songwriters should think, well, I’m just starting out. I don’t have any resources to learn this stuff. And the reality is that we do. So, you just mentioned a few of them. PROs, if you’re a member of PRO and you just call it the membership or membership department of a PRO, they can help out. There are, again, talking to fellow composers and songwriters. There is a lot of stuff on the Internet certainly can be found in reputable sources. 

 

I think also that we sometimes forget that there, even if we may not be represented by a manager or an agent right now, sometimes we can talk to somebody who is, and find out through them, and they can ask questions. So, I would just continue to think of people, that there really are ways to gather this information if you’re being creative about it. 

 

The next question here is, are public domain works always free to use in sync to film or do the producers only have to pay for the recording is international license?

 

Tal Dickstein [01:03:27] So I’m not sure I fully understood the question, but if something I mean, if something is in the public domain, then it can be used by anyone. And, you know, there are a number of ways that something can be in the public domain. Either it was the copyright has expired, right, if it was created very long time ago. There are there are things known as a common building blocks of music, right, so, simple musical phrases typically can’t be copyrighted. Or short lyrical phrases can’t be subject to copyright, you know. Clearly, there are gray areas, right. About how much is too much to take. There have been breaches of court cases that have addressed that recently. 

 

There is a Led Zeppelin case that went to trial, an appeal recently in California where the band members of Led Zeppelin prevailed in an infringement case, claiming that Stairway to Heaven infringed the music from a somewhat obscure song by the Taurus. And the takeaway there, really, is that like short musical phrases like three or four notes typically are OK, but there’s really no black and white rule. 

 

Joel Beckerman [01:04:43] So, thanks, the next question is… let me see if I can pull this down to a shorter question. A writer is asking about retitling words, being asked to retitle works so the same parties can add their name as authors and creators of the work. Not an assignment, but a change in the authorship and title. So, from a copyright, can you talk about it from a copyright perspective about retitling? 

 

Tal Dickstein [01:05:13] Yeah, sure. So, you know, if I write a song, and I want to give Joel and Amy credit for writing the song with me, you know, I can give them a piece of my copyright. But that doesn’t make, you know, they’re not actually authors. Right, so, I could, by contract, I could say, OK, Joel and Amy, I want you all to share a writer credit with me. And so, you’re entitled to register your interest with that with PROs. I could certainly do that. If, you know, it would have to be spelled out in the contract. Right, if I just simply say, OK, I want to give you credit as a as a co-writer, but you’re not going to be entitled to any of the copyright that goes along with that, that’s something else. 

 

Joel Beckerman [01:06:01] What if you take the exact same piece of music, call it something different, and have that exploited? Can you just talk about that? Because there’s been, we know the PROs don’t permit it and it’s frowned upon. But, just from a, specifically, from a copyright perspective, is there an issue around that? 

 

Tal Dickstein [01:06:22] So is this a work that you created or you’re taking it from someone else? 

 

Joel Beckerman [01:06:25] If somebody created, say, one composer created a work, and that was exploited, and they were asked to change that name to a different name and exploit it, the exact same recording, exact same composition, was written with a different name and exploited as if it were a separate work. 

 

Tal Dickstein [01:06:51] Yeah, to be honest, that’s not a scenario that I’ve come across. I mean, I know certainly, in other parts of the world there’s something known as “moral rights” where you can’t change the name of someone else’s work without their permission. Here, it sounds like this is something that you created yourself. You know, to be honest, it’s not a scenario that I’ve come across. If it’s a way to get more public performance income, that could be certainly flagged. 

 

Joel Beckerman [01:07:22] Right. Yeah. And it’s just, you know, about changing authorship. So, in general, the PROs look down upon that, and it’s really not permitted by PRO organization rules. 

 

So next, tare a couple of questions I’m going to try to answer at the end, which I think are not legal questions, if I can kind of answer them really quickly. But this, I thought was a really good one, which is “what insurance should I get to protect myself from mistakes or if I can’t finish a score in time, is there insurance to cover either of these eventualities?”

 

Tal Dickstein [01:08:03] So I can chime in there. There certainly is insurance to cover potential claims of copyright infringement, if by mistake you, mean accidentally copying someone else’s work. And by the way, a copyright infringement claim can be filed even if, as we all know, even if the copying is not actually occurred. Right. That’s what has to be determined at the end of the day. So, there’s a British saying that where “if there’s a hit, there’s a writ,” meaning that, you know, very popular songwriters and artists will unfortunately attract lawsuits. So there certainly is insurance that you can buy to protect against that. 

 

For songwriters and composers just starting off, I don’t know the economics of it. My sense is it may not be worthwhile, depending on, you know, how much the premiums are that they’re going to charge. You know, if you have a very successful work and you start earning a lot of income on it, that might be something you want to consider, but it’s really, as you become more established in your career, I think. 

 

Joel Beckerman [01:09:09] Got it. So, the next question here is, is an unfinished song, does that count as copyrighted? If you write it down with the notes you recorded, if it’s unfinished, is a copyrighted or can be copyrighted? 

 

Tal Dickstein [01:09:26] Absolutely. You know, as long as it’s enough creative expression to pass a very low threshold, you could even have just a few lines of music. As long as it’s something original that you’ve created, you’ve created on your own, that could be subject to copyright. Absolutely. 

 

Joel Beckerman [01:09:45] Excellent. Well, Tal, if you can give us maybe five more minutes. I’ll just try to wrap up the next five minutes or so, because I’ve had you talking a long time here. 

 

So right now, someone was talking about, essentially, if they’re set up currently as a sole proprietor, as an ASCAP writer, they wanted to know, would it be a major hassle to move those works from a sole proprietorship to an LLC? Is that a difficult thing? And is there a legal issue around that? Is there a, you know, the mechanics of it, moving in a PRO? So, can you talk about that? 

 

Tal Dickstein [01:10:25] Yeah. You know, in all honesty, it’s not something that I’ve had the occasion to work on. I would think that there’s a process to do that, as long as the authorship is staying the same. You know, because ownership of copyrights changes hands. Let’s say I signed with one publisher. and I give them rights to my catalog for some period of time, and then that period expires, and I go to work with another publisher, that other publisher could then register the works at the PRO. So, there is certainly a process for changing the entity that’s representing you with the PROs. In terms of just switching from sole proprietor to LLC, I haven’t done that, but I would bet there is a process for it. 

 

Joel Beckerman [01:11:09] Great. I’m going to give you a break for just two minutes here and maybe ask for a couple of questions that are, I think, a little bit less legal questions, but more sort of standard practice questions that have come up I think are really important. 

 

Somebody asked, you know, how can they, or, essentially, how the deal might be different for an independent film. So typically, practice is that if an independent film, in general, they have less money upfront to pay for an independent film. But a lot of independent filmmakers that I know actually retain their, not just their writers share. But they’re but the publisher shares as well. So, they actually can own those works. So, they start to look more like songwriters. So, then they can exploit those works in other ways. I’ve seen that is a way to compensate composers for low upfront fees. 

 

So, gosh, so many good questions here. Somebody said if “I want to gain experience scoring a film, can I do that” and actually just go to you, because this has a legal component, “can I do that for free, but have a contract that says if it’s a hit, I would eventually get paid.” So, in other words, can you defer compensation, based on, I don’t know how you define whether a film is a hit or not, but can you defer compensation in a contract? 

 

Tal Dickstein [01:12:30] Yeah, yeah. I mean, one thing I would say is there’s very little under the sun that can’t be accomplished with good contract drafting. I mean, there’s a business reason for getting something done, usually there’s a way to draft the contract around it. I mean, what you can certainly do is, based on revenue thresholds, right, that’s not uncommon, where if a film makes a hundred thousand dollars, maybe you get paid some percentage of that, if it makes a half a million, you get you know, you get paid another percentage or a million. It’s still another percentage after that. So, yeah, that’s definitely something you could build into a contract. 

 

Joel Beckerman [01:13:03] So there’s a lot of questions, again, I’m going to give you a break for a second because this is more standard practice. There’s a lot of questions about who fills out cue sheets, and Tal had mentioned earlier how important species are, that essentially you can’t get paid through a PRO without works both being registered and put in a sheet. And it said basically, who does that? Would a stock music library do that, if you work for them? Would a music supervisor do that? Would a publishing company or a production company do it? And the answer is yes, it can be done by anyone. It’s just really important that it’s done by someone and that it’s done properly. I think that’s probably one of the biggest pitfalls for composers, is not getting works registered or somebody doesn’t register the works, or somebody doesn’t submit cue sheets. 

 

Somebody else said, is it is it reasonable to ask a producer to send them a copy of the cue sheets and is it standard practices? Yes. If they are functioning as a publisher, it’s absolutely standard practice for them to give you a copy of the sheets to make sure that the works have been registered properly.

 

So maybe we’ll would just throw in one last question and call it a day. And there are so many great ones here, really wish we can get through all of them. So many good ones here just haven’t come up with the final one that’s a good one for you. I think the, again, just kind of pulling together a number of questions here. I think what a lot of people are asking in different ways is, “can I sell can I sell my copyright as a songwriter? And what about other songwriters?” You know, if there is a situation where there’s a split ownership of the song, can one person sell a portion, somebody else? You know, what are the restrictions or limitations in terms of being able to sell pieces of a song? 

 

Tal Dickstein [01:15:11] Sure, so really there are no restrictions. I mean, the one requirement under the Copyright Act is that a transfer of copyright ownership has to be in writing. So, if it’s just oral, then you could have a non-exclusive license if you give someone the right to use your interest in a song. But they you can’t transfer copyright ownership without actual writing signed by the grantor. So, there is that requirement. But beyond that, really, you know, anything that you can dream up can and will be done. 

 

 And one interesting thing that I just recently come across is, in this new world of NFT’s, I think there’s been some movement by certain very forward-thinking musical artists to actually put their copyright interests in NFT and then sell multiple NFT’s as fractional ownerships of the copyrights. You could have one hundred different owners, you could have a thousand owners, that would be very difficult to administer, but you could potentially do that. 

 

Just a couple of things to keep in mind when it comes to co-owners. So, one co-owner of copyright cannot sue another owner of copyright infringement. So, if I owned if I just own even one percent of a copyright and a particular song, I can’t be sued for infringement. I can use that song however I want, subject to any contract that I have with the other owners. So again, you want to think about, especially when there’s multiple creators of any work you want to think about, who’s going to have the right to go off and exploit it. If there’s a, let’s just say, it’s like a band and there’s one band member who gets to make decisions, that’ll be spelled out in a band agreement. Same thing for co-composers, etc. You want to make sure that’s all crystal clear and spelled out. 

 

Joel Beckerman [01:16:59] Tal, thank you so much for your time, and your expertise has just been incredible. The amount of ground that was covered in this period of time is pretty amazing. So, thank you so much, and thank you for Amy at VLA. 

 

You know, and our hope is that that these kinds of partnerships continue to benefit the YourMusicYourFuture Community. We’re all about education, as you know. It’s for composers, by composers. Again, I really want to suggest that you study the website. There’s a lot of there’s a lot of, sort of frequently asked questions there on the website that may answer, some of these questions I’m asking here are on the website, so you may want to check that out.

 

 I just want to give one more plug to independent songwriters, because Tal was talking before about the MLC, the Music Licensing Collective. It’s really, really important that independent songwriters sign up their works at the MLC. There is a very significant amount of money that is available for mechanical money to songwriters. But unless you have a publishing deal, the only way you get that money is if you sign up your own songs. So please check that out. There’s a lot of people due money who won’t get it unless they take care of that. 

 

So, again, my shameless plug for YourMusicYourFuture. Again, check out the website, see all the super high-profile composers who are supporters of what we’re doing. I really want to thank all you guys for joining. It’s been an amazing night, certainly for all of us. And so many great questions. And again, Tal and Amy. Tal, I cannot believe, you’re like a marathon runner in this thing. So, again, thank you so much for your time. Amy, thank you so much for your partnership. 

 

So, we’re going to sign off for now, but I suspect we’ll have another one of these maybe after you get a chance to catch your breath. So, thanks, everybody, and have a great night. 

 

Tal Dickstein [01:19:08] Thanks, everyone. Really enjoyed it. 

 

Amy Lehman [01:19:10] Thanks, Joel. Thank you, Tal. Thank you very much.