Chapter 36 Further Reading — Copyright, Licensing, and Getting Paid

A short shelf with one warning on every spine: this territory changes faster than any other in the book — rates adjust, organizations merge, statutes amend — so prefer current editions and the organizations' own materials, and date-stamp anything you write down. Per this book's habit, resources are named rather than linked; where a domain appears, it's domain-level only. And the chapter's one disclaimer extends to the whole shelf: education, not legal advice.

Beginner

  • This book's own appendices. Appendix G (Producer's Checklists) for printable versions of the split sheet and the four-desk evening; Appendix I (Resource Directory) for the organization categories by country.
  • The US Copyright Office's circulars (copyright.gov). Free, short, plain-language official explainers — the copyright-basics circular and the ones distinguishing musical compositions from sound recordings are this chapter's first half from the source's mouth. Also the registration portal itself, which is less intimidating than its reputation.
  • Your PRO's educational pages (ascap.com, bmi.com — or your country's society). Each walks its own enrollment, work registration, and the writer/publisher share mechanics better than any third party, because the forms are theirs. Read both before choosing.
  • The MLC's resources (themlc.com). The US streaming-mechanicals collective explains the mechanical right, the Music Modernization Act, and its free registration clearly — and its unmatched-royalties search is a sobering field trip: that pool is made of metadata mistakes this chapter taught you not to make.

Intermediate

  • Donald S. Passman, All You Need to Know About the Music Business (Simon & Schuster, latest edition). The standard text — the book entertainment lawyers hand clients. Deals, splits, points, publishing, sync, and the negotiating realities behind every paragraph of this chapter, written readably by a veteran practitioner. If you buy one book from this shelf, it's this one; buy it current, not used-from-three-editions-ago.
  • Ari Herstand, How to Make It in the New Music Business (Liveright, latest edition). The independent-artist operations manual — registrations, distributors, sync pitching, and cover flows from the DIY chair, with current-as-of-printing specifics that complement Passman's deal-side view.
  • Jeffrey Brabec and Todd Brabec, Music, Money and Success (Schirmer, latest edition). Twin brothers, both veteran music-business executives, on where the money actually comes from — royalty stream by royalty stream, with worked dollar examples. The taxonomy table at book length.
  • SoundExchange's educational materials (soundexchange.com). The digital-performance right, the statutory featured-artist split, and registration in each role — plus a searchable unclaimed-royalties list that, like The MLC's, doubles as a cautionary museum.

Advanced

  • Al Kohn and Bob Kohn, Kohn on Music Licensing (Wolters Kluwer). The professional treatise — the reference attorneys and publishers actually use for licensing law, clause by clause. Enormous, expensive, definitive; for the reader headed toward publishing, supervision, or clearance work as a vocation.
  • Donald S. Passman's deal-structure chapters, reread after your first real contract. Passman earns a second listing: the producer-agreement, publishing-deal, and sync chapters read entirely differently once a real document is on your table — which is also the moment the chapter's lawyer list activates.
  • The Music Modernization Act itself, via the Copyright Office's MMA explainers (copyright.gov). How the 2018 law rebuilt US streaming mechanicals — the rare chance to watch the chapter's "archaeology, not architecture" thesis get a new sedimentary layer in real time.

For Educators

  • Run the kitchen table live. Assign trios a fictional song with deliberately blurry contributions (a track-maker, a topline writer, and an arranger who composed one hook) and have them negotiate and sign the chapter's split-sheet template in class. Grade the artifact and the reasoning sentence per writer, not the percentages — case study 2 is the worked example and discussion text.
  • The royalty-flow trace as a graded diagram (Desk Lab C4). One stream, one bar play, one TV placement, drawn desk by desk — it reveals instantly whether the two-copyrights model is load-bearing or decorative in a student's head.
  • Case study 1 as a document-reading seminar. Have students narrate the Bitter Sweet Symphony saga strictly in chapter vocabulary (which copyright, which license, which desk, whose leverage) — then debate where the trio's split sheet would have changed the outcome. Pairs well with current reporting on catalog sales and re-recording clauses for a what's-changed coda.
  • Invite the real thing. Many regions have volunteer-lawyers-for-the-arts organizations and PRO campus representatives who will guest-lecture; an hour of a working clearance attorney's war stories converts more students to paperwork discipline than any reading list.