Mass Law Blog

The Music Licensing Marketplace is Not for the Faint of Heart

by | Nov 7, 2014

Over the last 100 years the musical licensing business has evolved into a complicated system! This is a consequence of the evolution of technology, business practices and copyright laws. A picture is worth a thousand words, and I’ve been meaning to post this attempt by the U.S. Copyright Office to create a graphic that illustrates how music licensing operates. The copyright office published this graphic earlier this year, as part of its Musical Licensing Study – one of three active policy studies in progress at the Copyright Office. Click on the image to expand it.

Music Licensing Chart

 

Here is Professor Fisher’s attempt to illustrate some of this in his 2014 CopyrightX course. This is a screenshot at approximately 11:00 in this CopyrightX video.

 

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