5.1.1 Rights in musical works, sound recordings or music videos
The exploitation of sound recordings and/or music videos that embody musical works is usually protected by copyright legislation. Such copyright legislation usually provides legal protections for the sound recording and/or music video, the rights in which are usually owned or administered by a record company. In addition, most or all of the performers or other types of contributors to a sound recording and/or music video have rights in the exploitation of those sound recordings and/or music videos. Separately, rights in the underlying musical work also exist, the rights in which are usually owned or administered by a music publisher or, in the absence of a music publisher, directly by the composer(s) of the musical work.
In both the case of the sound recording and/or music video and the musical work, the record company/performers and the music publisher/composers respectively may authorise a collective rights management organisation, to administer (and in some jurisdiction, actually own) the rights in those sound recordings and/or music videos and musical works. By contrast, where an artist is self-publishing music they have written and recorded themselves, all of these rights may be bundled in one rights controller, that is, the artist.
It is usually the record company that initiates the release of music to a consumer.
All of the rights described above exist in respect of each single creation, that is a musical work or a sound recording and/or music video. However, those rights in that single creation can be further subdivided:
Into percentages of ownership or administration, known as shares;
By periods of time, for example, from 1st January 2020 to 31st December 2030;
By territory;
By rights type, which define specific types of exploitation, for example, performance in public, recording for use in a feature film and many more; and
By almost any other factors that make business sense to the respective rights owner(s)
In cases of such subdivision the rights owner of that subdivision will usually be entitled to remuneration if the musical work, sound recording or music video is used.
Therefore, this part of the Web3 standard accommodates scenarios where any subdivision of use of the sets of rights, either created by legislation or by contract, are owned or administered by different parties.