ABSTRACT
Music is a team sport. Like most art, it is often improved by collaboration. Contributions by the featured artist, backing musicians, songwriting collaborators, and even outside artistic influences can all play a large role in the final musical product. Another set of individuals also plays a considerable, and usually unseen, role in crafting a song – technicians. Technicians (producers and engineers) play a critical role in shaping a song into something commercially viable, but often, they are left out of conversations surrounding copyright. Even though technicians often make important creative contributions to recordings, they are almost never considered ‘authors’ of the resulting work.
That should change. Technicians should have a seat at the copyright table. These artistic collaborators should own the art they help create – and just as importantly, be compensated for it. The compensation structure for technicians is often ambiguous. Many technicians are hired by artists who, because of royalty arrangements with record labels, may lack the funds to pay technicians. While industry customs have developed to account for this, relegating technicians’ pay to industry custom is concerning. Copyright ownership provides certainty and negotiating leverage to technicians. An ownership interest could take the form of recognition via joint authorship or a statutory royalty scheme for radio play. The Music Modernization Act shows that Congress can reimagine the relationship between music and copyright. The law should go a step further by recognizing collaborators’ contributions.
Evans, Brandon, Better Together: Joint Authorship in Technicians’ Contributions to Sound Recordings (June 2, 2023), Berkeley Journal of Entertainment and Sports Law, volume 12.
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