Joint works vs Collective

What is the name of your state? **California**



Artist 1 solely creates musical track recorded in home studio. Track is taken to outside studio where 1st & 2nd artist add previously created vocals. cost to complete recording is paid for by 3rd party.

Does 3rd party have rights to sound recording?
Considered joint work or collective work? musical track intended for another work?
If 1 artist creates track & vocals- 2nd artist creates vocals would artist 2 have the right to license the music? No artist contract in place. Artist is now deceased all music released without mechanical licenses. Contract was a pressing & distribution license between distributor & each production co. owned by artist. Contract states that finished masters which are solely owned by producers will be released within 6 months. This shows producer ownership yet another paragraph reads "masters will remain joint property of distro/label and production companies in perpetuity. Studio recorded 1st artist while rehearsing in vocal booth which was released on the re-re-release of artist 2's solo work yet under group name. no monies or statements recvd since the 1st release in 2001.
Sole beneficiary

"Does 3rd party have rights to sound recording?"

Only if 3rd party has a written contract that says if he pays, he gets the rights, OR if 1st and 2nd party are employees of 3rd party.

"Considered joint work or collective work? musical track intended for another work?"

Original song is owned by 1st party alone. Complete recording is likely a joint work between 1 and 2, but will depend on the circumstances. Again, all of this assumes that there are no written contracts that specify differently.

"If 1 artist creates track & vocals- 2nd artist creates vocals would artist 2 have the right to license the music? No artist contract in place. Artist is now deceased all music released without mechanical licenses. Contract was a pressing & distribution license between distributor & each production co. owned by artist. Contract states that finished masters which are solely owned by producers will be released within 6 months. This shows producer ownership yet another paragraph reads "masters will remain joint property of distro/label and production companies in perpetuity. Studio recorded 1st artist while rehearsing in vocal booth which was released on the re-re-release of artist 2's solo work yet under group name. no monies or statements recvd since the 1st release in 2001.
Sole beneficiary"

This doesn't make much sense. In the original case, if 1 and 2 are cocreators of a work, then either of them could license the work. As far as the rest of this goes, ownership of the masters is not the same as ownership of the copyright.

Again, this is pretty confusing, and it all depends on who owns what copyrights. Perhaps if you could make things more clear, it would be easier to answer you.

All pre-production was completed in our home studio. In fixed form and recorded on disk. Later taken to studio for others to add their vocal creation. Some tracks created by artist 1 contained his track & vocals alone 100% creation of artist 1 while other works contain works (tracks) created by each artist outside of studio paid for by disto/label. I once read about collective work vs joint but have not found the article. Copyrights were not registered due to the publishing co. Co-publishing & administration deal w/artist 1 & 2 from previous album released from all original members. Publishing co. did not accept album as option therefore refused to exercise protecting copyright from those who released w/out mech. license. Last week they have agreed to register works in my name or name of artist 1's publishing co. administered by them. Although will not legally fight them. They now claim that they did not register because they were unsure of what I wanted although suddenly changed their view. since some of the songs were solely created by artist 1 and others works of both yet "created in fixed form" at an outside location I questioned whether collective work made distinction of separate ownership of same song which would require a mechanical license issued by publishing co before release.

"All pre-production was completed in our home studio. In fixed form and recorded on disk. Later taken to studio for others to add their vocal creation. Some tracks created by artist 1 contained his track & vocals alone 100% creation of artist 1 while other works contain works (tracks) created by each artist outside of studio paid for by disto/label."

Still kind of hard to understand, but basically, if you created something alone, then you own the copyright. For the stuff that was made up of several people's work, then everyone who contributed to the work jointly owns the copyright to that work. Again, this can all be modified by contract.

"Copyrights were not registered due to the publishing co. Co-publishing & administration deal w/artist 1 & 2 from previous album released from all original members."

Doesn't matter. Copyright happen automatically, registration is not required.


"Publishing co. did not accept album as option therefore refused to exercise protecting copyright from those who released w/out mech. license."

What does this sentence mean? Could you clarify? The rules say "be brief" but you need to write enough to clearly explain the situation.

"Last week they have agreed to register works in my name or name of artist 1's publishing co. administered by them. Although will not legally fight them. They now claim that they did not register because they were unsure of what I wanted although suddenly changed their view. since some of the songs were solely created by artist 1 and others works of both yet "created in fixed form" at an outside location I questioned whether collective work made distinction of separate ownership of same song which would require a mechanical license issued by publishing co before release."

Again, if you could clarify this, it would be very helpful.

A couple of basic things:

Registration of a copyrighht is NOT required. If you do register a copyright, it gives you some added protections, and it gives a presumption of ownership, but it is not required -- basic copyright protections attach to a work as soon as it is "fixed in a tangible format."

In a song, there are usually two copyrights -- one for the "musical work" which is the actual song itself, and one for the "sound recording" which is the particular recorded performance of the work. These copyrights can, and often are, owned by two seperate entitites. In many music contracts, the artists who write the songs will own the copyright to those songs, and the recording studio -- who pays for the production, recording, etc. -- will own the copyright (via a contract) for the sound recording.

Anyway, if you could maybe clarify what your situation is, it would make it easier to come up with help for your problem.