Applying for music copyright - Miss Georgiou

Music copyright

Copyright gives the creators of certain media products, for example, music and videos, the rights to decide how they are used and how they are distributed. This law can be used to prevent other artists from producing work that is similar to what another artist has already produced. Also, the law means that the right person gets to take the credit for the success of the work produced. In the music industry, the copyright law can be used to protect both the actual song, for example the lyrics and the melody, as well as the recordings that are made of the song, for example, the CD's. However, the law does not protect work that is only in a persons head, there has to be evidence, either on paper or on recording that the medium belongs to them. In order to be protected under the copyright law, the work has to meet a certain criteria. For example, the work has to be an original piece that has been created by the artist themselves. Also, there has to be a way of perceiving and reproducing the work and the work must show a minimum degree of creativity. The copyright law is essential within the music industry because it preventa an artist from wrongfully receiving credit that they do not deserve for the creation of a song that isn't their own. If two songs sound so similar, the artist who first created the song may lose out on the opportunity to make more money due to the fact that the audience will have a choice of what they want to listen to and there is a chance that they will prefer the copyright song.

An example of a famous case of copyright happened in 1990 when Vanilla Ice released his song "Ice Ice Baby" which sounded not to dissimilar to Queen and David Bowie's "Under Pressure". Vanilla Ice is said to have altered the rhythm of the baseline thinking this would help him to avoid the question of credit, royalties, license or permission, however, it was clear to everyone that Vanilla Ice was in the wrong, which resulted in him having to pay a substantial amount to Queen and Bowie for copyright. Since then, the song "Ice Ice Baby" has been released again, but this time with all of the legal procedures followed. The copyright law prevents an artist from producing a song that is any way to similar to a piece of music that has been released already by another artist, as this helps to ensure that the original artist gets the credit they deserve for what is rightfully theirs. This example of copyright shows us how Vanilla Ice failed to follow the copyright law due to the fact that the melody of the two songs sounded fairly similar, and because the song "Under Pressure" was released well before "Ice Ice Baby" it is clear to see that Vanilla Ice was in the wrong and that he was making money for selling a song that technically wasn't his own.

Applying for copyright

Our group had to apply for copyright of the song 'Salvation' by Gabrielle Aplin because the song originally belongs to her and the Parlophone record label that she is signed to, which means they are the ones who have the rights to decide how the music is used, which includes any educational reasons. By applying for copyright we prevent Parlophone from complaining or possibly suing us for using Gabrielle Aplin's music without permission to.

We identified that Gabrielle Aplin, who produces music under the Parlophone record label, has the right to decide what happens to the music that she produces. We then sent the following email to the record label requesting permission to use the song 'Salvation' for our A2 media project. We have not yet received a response for the email sent, however, we understand that record labels are signed to more than just one artist, and therefore are very busy and are unlikely to reply to our message because our video will not be seen by a large audience. We are currently still awaiting a response from Parlophone record label regarding our permission to create a music video for 'Salvation' by Gabrielle Aplin, however, we have decided to begin creating a video anyway.