Copyrighting Music?

• Apr 23, 2010 - 13:35

Hey there

I am wondering about publishing music. I believe definitely in the availability of music to be played by all, and thus when I publish music, I wish for it to be licensed so that others may freely download and play it. However, I wish to preserve both my authorship and the content of any music that I write.

Does anyone have a suggestion as to how I should be going about this? I have read up on Creative Commons on our old friend Wikipedia, but that hasn't helped me that much.

Basically,
1. I want people to be able to freely distribute music
2. I want the music to be publishable in other collections without my permussion
3. I want to retain authorship
4. I want my music to remain unchanged in its original form
5. I want people to be able to take my music and adapt it for other instruments and arrangements if necessary

Does this make sense?

Comments

• Apr 23, 2010 - 16:25

I'm not a lawyer. Neither a good musician. But 4 and 5 looks very tricky.

My advice, take the CC test
If you are ok with your music being changed, remix, arranged for everybody even for commercial purpose but remains the author and be attributed on all derived works. Then CC attribution is ok.

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• Apr 26, 2010 - 11:58

Hi, Etienne, what you want is a little biti like "keep your cake and eat it too..."

But, seriously, let me turn the question round. What rights would you want the desired 'retained authorship' to cover? Fame and fortune? Let's leave fame for now. As an author - in line with the traditional performing rights practices, you would be in control of the use of your piece of music in its original or revised version(s) - whether in terms of sold copies of printed music (regardless of its being printed on paper or screen), or its public performances (again, regardless of its being performed by musicians or electronically - to live audience, broadcast or on-line listeners). Am I right in thinking, that you want (in effect, to sell) the printed music to any interested party free of charge and leave a potential performance/recording to chance (expecting that your name will be credited as author, and the performer will report the details of performance/recording to the relevant performing rights agency)?

This is where 'fame' comes to the picture. Assume, someone 'pinches' your piece - and makes a fortune claiming authorship of your piece. You can sue him for compensation for damages- and you'd have a chance to get a settlement if you can prove that the piece was published on a website on such and such a date (and the alleged 'author' was likely to have seen it).

That could bring you satisfaction. But what happens if your piece is performed and reported on a few occasions - that would not bring in a lot - perhaps not even a penny.

Fame and fortune does not usually come without very hard promotion efforts and most of the times, financial investments beyond the means of composers. If you just want to be happy in the knowledge that people play/listen to your music - a copyright may just reduce your chances. And for being noticed and remembered .....

Look back on any forums (here or elsewhere) you will see numerous valuable ideas and responses but, due to the information explosion, you can consider yourself lucky if you can find back your own contributions ....

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• Apr 28, 2010 - 07:11

Hey, drikanb. Not exactly what I had in mind?

I want to license my music under CC, but I'm not exactly sure how to do it...

Let's take a popular band as an example. If MUSE were to record a song, and the recording company were to sell their sheet music, then not only would the music be copyright in order to keep it from being freely distributed, but also copyright in order to protect the music from being changed, and to keep the original author as the original author.

I want to do that, except I want the music to be freely available. I just don't want to sell it, but want to keep my other rights.

Does that make more sense?

Etienne

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• Apr 28, 2010 - 07:49

Hi all

Thank you for your insightful comments and thoughts. You all helped me greatly to find the right license. I thought about it, and carried on doing my research on Creative Commons, and finally figured out what I want. The Attribution - Share Alike 3.0 license is what I need:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Thank you all for helping me. I'm not sarcastic- you really helped!

Etienne

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• Jun 8, 2010 - 03:19

Up to now, in playing with MuseScore, I have chosen music in the public domain to transcribe in MuseScore, and post the .mscz files here and upload the .mp3 files onto Soundcloud for listening and downloading. I would like to experiment with my orchestration skills by taking piano music already written (and copyrighted), and orchestrating it with MuseScore, and upload the .mp3 file(s) publicly, as before. I have no commercial or self-promotion intent. If I always put something like "Copyright 1980 by John Doe" into the .msz file, and put the same phrase in comments along with the .mp3 file, is this ok?
I know I could find public domain music that would suit my purpose; I am only asking because I have already found music that interests me and I would like to go with that if I can. I realize that I may be opening a can of worms here and it would be much simpler to pick a PD piece.

Here's some suggested replys to my question:

[ ] Yes, no problem.
[ ] Hey, heck with the legal stuff, go for it!
[ ] "According to Section X of the International Copyright Convention, Article B., Paragraph 2, (etc etc)", for example
[ ] Hmmm, talk to a lawyer.
[ ] You're crazy, pal.
[ ] Forget it.

All opinions appreciated!

Thanks.

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• Jun 8, 2010 - 05:39

Thanks, David. I'll just stick to using music in the public domain.

On another topic, a recent post of yours regarding the pan settings in the mixer panel (version 0.9.5, for me): I found that turning down the reverb settings across the orchestra dramatically improved the playback sound of my earlier transcriptions of Beethoven, etc. They all sound fantastic now. No more muddled sound; all the instruments come thru bright and clear when I set a different pan setting for each instrument. I intend to redo all of them on Soundcloud, with an occasional tweak here and there. I don't know if anyone will care enough to re-download any of them, but the difference in sound is enough to motivate me.

Now I'm really looking forward to writing music with MuseScore!

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