We live in a society where anything can be priced and sold as a product or service, and the music world is no different.
Before you enjoy a song in your car or listen to a current hit with your friends, the music goes through a series of cuts and transformations before reaching you as a final product to be consumed.
Is there a way to price a creative process?
Apparently, within the music world it is indeed possible; we are talking about the creative process and how the distribution of these rights is done to the people who are involved in the production/conception and delivery of a song.
In the profit-sharing process, there's a percentage for the record label that distributes the music, producers who created the beat, composers (which could be just the artist or a group of people who worked on the song's concept), and they all receive a share of the profits from this work.
And why is this so important?
Depending on the success and reach of a song, a simple product that would earn a certain amount of money can yield much more – and everyone wants their piece of the pie, right?
Through advertising as a means of communication, this can be subdivided into sub-products, such as film soundtracks, series, soap operas, commercials, and other products that can generate revenue and profit for everyone involved in the creative process.
How does it work in Brazil?
Our system for protecting and remunerating authors/artists is one of the most effective in the world! The Central Office for Collection and Distribution (ECAD) is responsible for managing this system and redistributing the portion to the people involved in the process.
But the process of distributing copyright royalties doesn't always work as expected. I've selected a case where we can see that the copyright battle doesn't always end in the artist's favor.
Taylor Swift
Singer/songwriter Taylor Swift had her catalog (her first six studio albums) sold without her consent. While she would still be entitled to a percentage of streaming revenue, she would not own the masters (original recordings of her songs).
This case raised a major question within the music industry about artists' right to the largest percentage of their creations. Advocating on behalf of smaller artists since 2014, when she wrote an open letter to Apple Music criticizing how royalties were distributed to smaller artists, Taylor entered into a process of re-recording her first six albums as a form of protest and reclaiming her work.
In her speech at Billboard's Women in Music 2019, where she accepted the night's top award as "Woman of the Decade," she broadly discussed what it's like to be a woman in the music industry and how important it is to advocate for the rights of what you create as an artist.
Inspiration vs. plagiarism
Within the artistic community, many musicians, having access to the same references, may end up with similar works where the thin line between inspiration and plagiarism becomes somewhat blurred.
Something that has happened a lot with singer Hayley Williams and her band Paramore, in the video below she talks a bit about creative spaces. Recently she received 50% of the musical credits for the singer's recent hit. Olivia rodrigo and his song “good 4 u” which is heavily influenced by his band’s hit “Misery Business”.
Everything that is produced and sold has a production chain behind it that sets the price, delivers, and generates profit; a simple reproduction of a song generates passive income for another person who was involved in the production process.
I'm sharing this Forbes video about investing in the music industry. It's not a reality we experience in our country, but it's interesting to see how the music industry can be a good source of profit and investment.
