Buddy Holly's widow has entrusted the publishing rights for the rock icon's influential catalog to BMG in a newly announced arrangement. This marks the first time since the singer's death in 1959 that someone other than Maria Elena Holly will be the custodian to Holly's song catalog and overall image.
Katie Baron provides an informative summary of various music publishing rights in this article published in Musical America Special Reports’ June 2014 Edition, Music Publishing: Copyright Demystified.
This article co-authored by Katie Baron presents a practical guide to the opera commissioning process and related rights issues, illustrating the series of transactions that opera companies, composers and librettists may be required to enter into in order to premiere a new work.
The 2014 publication of the International Association of Entertainment Layers was greeted with great success at the Midem and SXSW music conferences this spring. The book focuses on how the advancement of new technologies that allow content to reach global audiences instantly have made it more important than ever for entertainment professionals to familiarize themselves with internationally recognized standards for copyright ownership and licensing.
The Los Angeles District Court ruling in in Scorpio Music S.A. v. Victor Willis that Village People Songwriter Victor Willis is entitled to terminate his grants of rights in 33 musical compositions is being hailed as a landmark decision that "will send shock waves through the record industry."
The SOPA debate is emblematic of the growing tension between the copyright creator — the authors, composers, lyricists and artists who have contributed so much to the socio-economic fabric of American life — and the “interests” of the public in having free access to the works of others. However, the creator/public dichotomy is a false paradigm. What is truly at stake are the competing interests of the creators and the corporations who have acquired and are exploiting their works.
Arguing that Congress has an obligation “to preserve fairness and justice for artists,” John Conyers, the senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, has called for a revision of United States copyright law to remove ambiguities in the current statute about who is eligible to reclaim ownership rights to songs and sound recordings.
