Before putting your music out there, there are very important steps in this process that will have a significant role in the future when your music starts to take off and specially when it starts to play in media vehicles around the world. And the most important part of this process: making sure that all the revenue this will generate will be returned to the owner of this music, the original composer, you.
The Publishing Rights:
Publishing rights refer to the rights associated with the musical composition itself. These rights are usually owned by the songwriter or composer, and they encompass the right to reproduce the work, distribute it, perform it publicly, and create derivative works. In simple terms, the publishing rights determine who gets the credit and the royalties for a song.
Basically, this is what will guarantee that whenever, wherever your composition is played, performed, or transmitted to the public in any shape or form, the appropriated institutions and oversights will collect and redistribute to you, any revenue and profit created with this type of transmission.
The importance of knowing:
Don’t be fooled to believe that this will be a concern only in the beginning of your career as a musician and composer, as a matter of fact, as your career progress and your music starts to be more and more used around the media vehicles, this will become a bigger subject to be taken care of thoroughly, this will be a matter of very big importance through all the extent of your career, always take care and know the status of your publishing rights.
The story:
Maybe one of the most famous stories and public dramas of the music industry when it comes to the importance of music publishing and laws, this is very useful as an instructive story and as a retrospective on the importance of the matter.
You maybe have heard somewhere that every time a Beatles song plays somewhere, the revenue made of it goes straight to Michael Jackson’s estate.
Although this is virtually right, there is a lot more to the story and goes way back that just Michael Jackson buying the publishing rights to The Beatles.
After their debut album, manager Brian Epstein already became aware that the Lennon-McCartney collaboration would become a very sought after brand in the music industry, and the publishing rights were no less important to it.
This led to a partnership with Dick James who began the company Northern Songs to look after all the Beatles publishing royalties.
The company was mostly owned by Dick James with Lennon and McCartney each owning 20% of the company.
An interesting point of view can also be seen in the documentary series Get Back released by Disney+, which starts showing the state of the band members after the passing of Epstein.
The band had to deal with creative differences, money issues, and many other issues common in the history of big bands, wouldn’t be different with The Beatles.
This escalated further in 1969 when the relationship between the Beatles and Dick James soured, and Northern Songs Company shares owned by Dick James and Brian Epstein were sold to ATV Music.
With the Beatles suffering financial difficulties, they were unable to outbid ATV Music for control of their own publishing. They also sold their own shares in their publishing to ATV Music.
This meant none of the compositional royalties of the Beatles went to any of the Beatles after 1969.
Paul McCartney, Michael Jackson, and the buyout
Maybe the most famous album in history, it wouldn’t be the same without a Beatle featuring in it, Thriller was released in 1982 and featured Paul McCartney in one of the songs, This Girl Is Mine also featured a videoclip in which Paul was also featured.
It was around the of the shooting of the video, that Paul advised Michael of how lucrative buying publishing rights could be as a business.
Then in 1984, Michael was told that ATV was up for sale and the company owned 4,000 songs, including those 251 by the Beatles.
At the time McCartney said it was out of his price range and Yoko Ono, who is Lennon’s surviving wife, said she was fine with Jackson owning them, rather than a huge corporation.
A decade after the initial deal, Jackson sold 50 percent of ATV to Sony for $95 million, creating the music publishing company Sony/ATV. Today, the company owns the rights to the Beatles’ songs, as well as those from artists like Bob Dylan, Marvin Gaye, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Hank Williams, and Roy Orbison.
After Jackson’s death, at 50 years old, Sony Music took full control of the catalog seven years later with Sony/ATV agreeing to pay $750 million to the late performer’s estate to buy out the
remaining 50 percent stake in the company.
In Conclusion:
The biggest lesson you can take with this story is that even if one of the most renowned and awarded musicians in history had problems with publishing rights regarding his own music, you as a musician and composer should always concern and keep track of your rights and owning every aspect of your own music and art, every aspect of it is important and fundamental to have full guarantee that the revenue made with your music will always gravitate back to who rightfully owns it.
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