Copyright protects writers and musicians, or whoever owns . It is defined as ‘the exclusive and assignable legal right, given to the originator for a fixed number of years, to print, publish, perform, film, or record literary, artistic, or musical material.’ (Merriam Webster Online Dictionary 2019).
This basically means that if you, as a creator of a piece of material, be it writing or a recorded piece of work, find that somebody has copied or plagiarised your work without your consent, you have the right to take legal action and can use the copyright act to sue for compensation and claim anyfurther profits made off of your own work.
Copyright was originally design to protect creators and their work, and allow them to be rightfully paid for the things they have created, without somebody else using it for their own benefit or profits.
To be protected under copyright laws (in the UK), you must be a British citizen, living in the UK, and you must publish your work in the UK as well. So all you must do, as long as you fulfill these requirements, is prove that you are indeed the owner, or one of the joint owners, of the piece of work in question.
However, this is easier said than done. Luckily for us, we have services, such as PRS, to help us keep track of who might be using our music, so we can collect our royalties.
PRS, or the Performing Rights Society, is a non-profit organisation, that collects royalties on behalf of musicians whenever their music is performed, played, or used in pretty much any way. They license and protect pieces of work from artists who have signed up, and pass all the profits onto the musician.
Prsformusic.com. (2019). PRS for Music: royalties, music copyright and licensing. [online] Available at: https://www.prsformusic.com/ [Accessed 3 Jun. 2019].
However, this does not mean PRS is free for musicians. To sign up, there is a one of membership fee of £100, however they do try to explain that you shouldn’t pay this and join up, until you feel like you will earn that money back from them.
PRS is accompanied alongside MCPS, or the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society, is similar to PRS, yet its focused on claiming royalties for songs that are published again and sold separately to your own sales and publishes. For example, if one of my songs was placed on a NOW CD, MCPS would collect my royalties for this.
To be able to use somebody’s work within my own work, without the owners written consent, would be a violation of the copyright act. So if I wish to use a sample from somebody’s music, I would have find out who the owner is, how to contact them, and then make some form of deal with them to allow me to use this sample in my music.