MCPS's historical development, aims, purpose and functions within the music industry

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The MCPS is one of the most important licensing and collection bodies in the music industry. It plays many roles in the industry and is vital in managing so much music, as it has been seen that music publishing is more profitable than selling records nowadays.

MCPS’s historical development, aims, purpose and functions within the music industry

The Mechanical Copyright Protection Society, or MCPS, was set-up in 1924 from a merger between Mecolico (Mechanical Copyright Licenses Co Ltd- set-up in 1910 in anticipation of the Copyright Act of 1911) and CPS (Copyright Protection Society Ltd- set-up in 1911). The MCPS is owned by the MPA (Music Publishers’ Association Ltd).

 The MCPS is a non-profit organisation set-up to represent composers, music publishers and songwriters. It is know as a collection society because its main tasks are to collect and distribute royalties to its members. () It collects money from music users in the UK who record music into various formats such as TV, radio programmes, films, CDs, websites and many other mediums. It is permitted to do this because before anyone can use one of it members musical works, they have to be issued a licence to use that work. The mechanical licence as it is called is the permission to “reproduce the song on a sound recording”. (Page 80. Harrison, A. 2003) The mechanical right consists of three rights from the Copyright Designs & Patents Act 1988, which are the right to copy the work, the right to issue copies of the work to the public and the right to rent or lend the work to the public. It would be very complicated if the music user wanted to use a musical work but had to seek and find out the owner of the music and then negotiate on a individual work-by-work basis. () It is just common sense that there is a licensing body to deal with all the music. The licensees to the MCPS supply the details of the music used so that when this information is matched up with the databases at the MCPS, it allows the MCPS to correctly allocate the right amount of royalties to the correct songwriters, music publishers and composers. This means that every time a work is copied, or a copy is issued to the public, royalties generated from its licensing will be collected by the MCPS and paid on to its members. () “The MCPS mechanical royalty fee is 8.5% of the PPD (Published Dealer Price) of a CD excluding VAT and other added taxes.” ()

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Copyright issues related to the MCPS

As mentioned above, the MCPS deals with three of the restricted acts: the right to copy the work, to issue copies of the work to the public and to rent or lend it to the public. If any of these acts is carried out and one doesn’t have the right to do so because they don’t have the appropriate licence or haven’t cleared a sample for example, it is an infringement of copyright. The MCPS has the right to suspend any payments of publishing income. The MCPS can also act as an ...

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