What are the different types of music royalties and how do they work?
Conventional music royalties can be a complicated subject. However, in order to keep this piece short and to the point we are going to generalise and cover the 3 most relevant aspects for a professional music buyer. These are: –
Sync (or Synchronisation)
Sync is the license required to add a piece of music to your audio-visual production. For example, mixing music with your video is classed as synchronising and you have to pay the copyright owner of the recording to do this.
Mechanical
Using the previous example, if you want to make DVDs of your video including the copyrighted music you must cover what is known as mechanical copyright. The mechanical element of the license allows you to make a defined number of copies, in this case, your DVD.
Performance
Staying with the same example, you have a sync license to allow you to include the music with your video; you have a mechanical license for your copies, but let’s say you wanted to play it in public you would also need to cover the performance aspect of the license.
It is important that any music license covers all of the music copyright areas you wish to exploit.
Hopefully, this post has given you a better understanding of music royalties and how they work in relation to music licensing. Please feel free to share, comment or ask any questions you may have.
Read next post in this guide: Understanding Music Libraries
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