Music Copyright Marries Creativity and Money

What's the big deal about music copyright anyway? Music copyright is a marriage between creativity and money.

A painter paints pictures on canvas.  But musicians paint their pictures on silence.  ~Leopold Stokowski

The ideal story works this way.

John writes a song. He's so passionate about the song that he then makes a rough recording of the song in a home studio (talk about a room full of eggtrays, a microphone and a computer with recording software). Then he approaches Mr. Producer to listen to it.

Mr. Producer likes the song. He's so excited about it that he employs Mr. Singer, (a popular music performer), a band, and a high tech music studio to arrange and record the song. He made John's song part of an 8-track music album.

Mr. producer then promotes then aggressively promotes the album. Later the CDs containing the tracks are distributed to music stores nationwide.

The people like the song! People who hear the songs on radio and TV begin looking for the CDs in the music stores, including those in the internet. They don't want illegal copies. They want the original ones, regardless of rock bottom prices of counterfeit copies!

Mr. Producer pays the royalties! Six months later Mr. Producer tells John, "Hey, we sold 200,000 copies of the CD with your song on it! Here's the check for P200,000 and a computation of how we arrived at that amount."

Can you imagine John's face at this point?

Mr. Producer keeps on paying the royalties. Because of the popularity of John's song, the CDs continue to sell and John keeps on receiving checks from Mr. Producer.

Can you see John continuously writing more great songs---with glee---at this point?

Yet the story doesn't end there.

Music users pay royalties. John then gets inquiries from TV and film producers as well. Later, these TV, film and radio producers pay John generous amounts for allowing them to use John's song in a film, as well as in their TV and radio program.
Even Mr. Singer, the artist whom the Producer has employed to sing John's song, begins paying John a share of the proceeds in the concerts he organizes.

Establishment pay for the rights to play the music. Later, the Filipino Society of Composers, Artists and Performers (FILSCAP), of which John has registered as a member, also begins handing him checks as payment from establishments who use John's songs in their stores, hotels, restaurants, malls, etc.

Whew! This story is every music composer's dream.

And this can become true in the Philippines, only when every player in the story follows the rules.