Understanding Copyrights Neil W. Netanel is Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law in Los Angeles, CA. He specializes in Intellectual Property Law

The music business is built upon, and exists because of copyrights. Anytime anyone creates an original song, and either writes that song down or records it, a copyright is created. Along with the creation of this copyright comes a bundle of rights that the creator immediately has. The creator can, for example, sell or license her copyright to someone else. In a nutshell, that's the music business: someone creates a copyright, allows someone to use it, and then derives financial compensation for that use.

Of course, this process of allowing someone to use a copyright and the actual use of the copyright can result in any number of complexities, but at the core there is simply the copyright.

To be a successful artist in the music business or to be a successful business person in the music business you MUST understand how copyrights work - they are the currency of the record industry. This section will explain them.