Post 3: Regulation in the music industry

The music business is largely a self-regulated industry - everyone seems to be involved in some aspect of control, from individual artists to unions and corporate giants, from publishers to licensers, from collecting agencies such as MCPS, PRS, PPL and VPL to copyright and trademark offices each having their own responsibilities and roles.

The UK copyright collective (also known as a copyright collecting agency or copyright collecting society) is a body created by private agreements or by copyright law that collects royalty payments from individuals and groups for copyright holders. They have the authority to license works and collect royalties as part of a statutory scheme or by entering into an agreement with the copyright owner to represent the owner's interests when dealing with licenses and potential licenses in the UK music industry.

Songrite UK (A copyright office) is also responsible for issuing copyright to songs, music and lyrics in the UK. Songrite is a leading global copyright registration service, used by both up and coming and professional songwriters who wish to claim and declare rightful ownership of their music. They register and secure the copyrights of new songs, music and lyrics in the UK music industry.

Collection offices are used by the labels or artists to recover funds that are due to them and generally enforce the copyright holder's rights. There are three main collection offices that act for the various types of sales within the music industry.














1. MCPS (Mechanical Copyright Protection Society)
In the UK the MCPS exists to oversee the collection and distribution of "mechanical publishing/composer royalties" generated from CD, DVD etc sales. Royalties take the form of a license fee that pays for permission to duplicate a recording. Therefore this fee is normally collected before duplication of a CD, DVD etc, although smaller labels and composers financing their own recordings and selling them can apply for a license that allows them to pay (often themselves!) retrospectively as sales income comes in.

2. PRS (Performing Rights Society)
The music copyrights generate a second lot of royalties when performed or broadcast on TV or radio, whether live or through recording. In the UK the PRS exists to collect and distribute these royalties directly to composers.

3.VPL (Video Performance Limited)
This organisation licenses the right to perform music video recordings (usually by broadcasters, clubs and pubs). Like their parent PPL, they collect royalties for record companies but don’t pay royalties to music performers.

Fair use is a policy that counteracts the use of copywritten work. In its most general sense, fair use is any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and “transformative” purpose, such as to comment upon, criticize, or parody a copyrighted work. Such uses can be done without permission from the copyright owner.

But for most instances, a licence must be purchased in order to use even one second of the song in any other form of work. However, YouTube has other protocols that they follow on their site. When a copyrighted song is used on a video, adverts are still run to produce revenue from the video, but all earnings are instead given to the copyright holder.

Youtube has had many controversial problems with the content that they host on their site as the freedom that the site offers with uploading content to it allows for many rules to be stretched and broken. Over 300 hours worth of videos are uploaded every minute, so there have been limitations as to how content is regulated on the site. An example of how the rules were bent is with the unrated music video for Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" which featured a vast amount of nudity and sexualisation that sparked an uproar combating the regulation of videos on YouTube. In conjunction with this and other violating videos, YouTube has begun age restricting videos in accordance with the BBFC's guidance.