From this, royalties is the money that is made by the legal use of music. There are different types of royalties some of these are; mechanical royalties is when permission is given to mechanically reproduce music on to a CD for public distribution. Performance rights and royalties which allow music to be performed live this basically give a songwriter a set fee when the song they wrote is performed however many times by a popular artist. Print rights and royalties is a royalty paid to a songwriter when their music is published as sheet music.
Companies such as PRS (Performing Right Society) in the UK are very important to songwriters, artists and publishers to sign up to because that is the best way to receive full royalties for any of their music. PRS for Music licenses its members' musical works whenever they are played, performed or reproduced both in the UK and globally through its partner network. As soon as a writer submits a song to PRS they get royalties from whenever their music is played. PRS finds out who needs to pay for the rights to play a song, PRS get 20% of whatever money is made and the rest goes to the submitter of the song.
For example, The Beatles song ‘Help!’ holds the title as the song that has been recorded the most. Well over two thousand artists have recorded versions of it. Each time a new recording is made, the artists and recording companies have to pay a royalty. While the owners of the Beatles’ copyrights are likely to be millionaires many times over, there are many other thousands of artists who make an ordinary living out of their creations.
It is important that licensing and royalties are in the music industry because copyright protects the people who create, produce or invest in creative work. It enables them to decide how their work can be used by others. If someone owns the copyright in a piece of music or a song it means they are the only person who can adapt, reproduce, distribute, perform or broadcast, for example, on the Internet, the work without permission. If someone else wants to do any of these things to the person’s pieces of work then they have to obtain permission from the original person who created the piece of work and pay a royalty fee which boosts the person who wrote the songs income. I licensing and royalties were not in place then there would be lots of legal battles on who owns the rights of songs and who should get paid when the songs are played etc and who gets what percentage of the royalties.
by
aoifecaptain (student)
