Copyright vrs. publishing rights?

Well, the only reason somebody else owns rights to something you wrote is if you sold the rights - so read the fine print in any contracts.

You're parting with some publisihng/distribution rights whenever you enter into a contract with a music publisher or a recording company. As much as they'll tell you "it's a standard contract", there's really no such thing - your deal is your deal. Somebody else has a better deal, and somebody else has a worse one. But whatever your deal is, it spells out what you're giving up and what you're getting in exchange for those rights.

As to specifically publishing rights -- some deals will grant someone first publishing rights. You retain copyright to the material, but you have granted that if it is to be published, it gets to be published with a certain publishing house first. In such a deal, you would retain all the licensing rights regarding derivative works, etc., but you will have granted an exclusive publishing license to someone.

Granting publishing rights is a copyright grant of license. You own and control the copyright, as the owner and controller of the copyright, you grant a license to publish to a particular party.

"First rights" are only used in the print business, and are really only typical of newspaper or magazine deals. The publisher gets to print it first, then rights revert back to you - you can then sell "second rights", "reprint rights", etc.

But first rights are only purchased because somebody wants to print it. That's not a scenario for songs - if you have a publisher interested, it's because the song has been released. And that means you've probably already got a "song publishing" deal, which is very different. (Stellar lyrics might be an exception - they could be printed in something like a poetry magazine, although I don't recall seeing lyrics for something not yet released)

In a "song publishing" deal, you're parting with exlusive rights. The publisher is going to try to sell the song... by getting it "placed" with an artist for recording, or possibly selling it to a music book publisher for inclusion in a collection of printed works. Since they're investing time and money pitching it, and every author is familiar with rejection letters, they expect to hear more than a few "no" answers before they get to a "yes". And that means they want to prevent you from cutting them out if you sell it on your own - so a song publishing deal precludes you from selling your song to somebody else.

That doesn't mean they tie up the rights forever. You want to pay attention to the "term" in a song publishing contract - that's how long the other party controls the rights. In a great deal they'll have only a year or two to sell it to someone, and if they don't you get all the rights back. If they do sell it to someone, there will probably be an automatic extension of the term (negotiate this - make sure it has to make x dollars before the term is extended). In a lousy deal, they'll get the rights for as long as the copyright is valid. In a really lousy deal, they'll also get rights to songs you haven't even written yet - but that's usually for contracts as a staff writer or with a label-controlled publishing company.

Noteboat -- this sometimes applies to songs as well. For example, songs that are part of a musical or performance work can be part of the publishing deal for that work, unless explicitely excluded.

I agree, when talking about straight song works, it wouldn't make sense. But when talking about theater or film or other performance art, where the work is part of a larger publishing effort, it does happen.

Although, I doubt that's what madisgp was asking about . . . so I guess I'm off on a tangent.

Thanks, King - I wasn't aware that musical theater was treated more like magazine publishing.

Film rights are different - they're called "syncrhonization rights" (the right to synchronize music with the pictures). They're negotiated case-by-case, and typically give the film producer to right to distribute that particular movie basically forever for one set fee. On the flip side, that fee can be huge - getting a song used over title credits will make you about as much money as selling 300,000 copies or so of the tune on CDs :)

Thanks, King - I wasn't aware that musical theater was treated more like magazine publishing.

I don't know that it's normative. But I have run into it.

I think it depends alot on how the product got to where it is. The performance art stuff tends to be more this way than the broadway shows. And the smaller independent publishing efforts tend towards it more than the larger outfits.

It might be a product of how much legal representation small publishers and small authors can afford . . .