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If you’re the owner of intellectual property rights in a musical product (a song, perhaps, which you wrote or produced), it shouldn’t be that hard to get your fair share of the royalties generated by that product, right?
Actually, that can be just about as difficult as was the labor expended in creating a protected artistic work. And, when you think about why that might be the case, it’s not that hard to see why.
The global marketplace is a complicating factor, for starters. Although the United States has a system in place for counting up the coins generated by performance of recorded music and thereafter doling them out equitably to the parties to whom they rightfully belong, that system is far from being uniform internationally.
In other words, murkiness creeps in. As noted in a recent media article discussing the fair allocation of funds to owners of rights in musical works, intellectual property rights “differ” across borders, which certainly complicates the process of revenue accounting and generation.
And here’s another point passed along by that article: the music industry is “gnarled in complexity by both nature and design.”
One manifestation of that is eminently clear every time a consumer thinks of a song and wants to access it. That person might go to a large retail store and purchase a CD. He or she might also opt to shop online. Perhaps the preferred route of access is via Google Play or iTunes.
The point, as noted by the above-cited media piece: Although the formats for accessing music (mostly digital now) are constantly evolving, “techniques accounting for the revenue so generated are falling woefully behind.”
The creators of new and valued things — and not just in music, but in every realm — have a fundamental right to profit from their application and utility.
Questions or concerns regarding intellectual property can be directed to a proven business attorney who provides a full range of services geared toward protecting the rights of artists and other property owners.