For musicians, they could feel intimidated with the law. It is never helpful as well when the law is in relation to your craft and happens to be the most complex fields. On the other hand, it does not mean that you can just neglect it and do nothing about it.
Basically, it is more important that you have the foundation of laws relevant to your field so you can protect your craft and art.
While laws relating to music are quite complicated and vast, following are the most significant points that every artist need to grasp.
Copyright Laws
The field of law that makes the most impact to music is the copyright. While majority of the musicians have heard of this term before, very few know what it exactly means or entails. Copyright is protecting different forms of creative expression that’s fixed in tangible form. But when talking about music on the other hand, there are two kinds of creative works that are normally involved and these are sound recordings and musical works that go into a composition.
Duration of a Copyright
For the sake of this article, let’s assume that your work was created after or on January 1, 1978. This is the time when current Copyright Act takes effect. Say that the protection for copyright lasts for the author’s lifetime plus another 70 years.
The moment when the copyright term has ended or finalized, the work will enter public domain and it’ll be for anyone to use.