If a musician is able to produce and record music from the comfort of their home, they automatically own The Master of the song. In a situation where a record label provides studio equipment and personnel in the recording of an artist’s piece of music, they are essentially paying for the recording and are the rightful owners of The Master (unless otherwise stipulated in the contract). This information is vital to know because it means that if I collaborate with a friend, using his home studio for a recording, he is legally the owner of that recording unless it is stated otherwise in our collaboration agreement. If an independent artist owns their masters, they can then decide to use those recordings in various ways, including licensing them to a record label for a period of time for income generation.

Why “The Master” is essential 

As explained in Music Publishing, there are various streams and deals that artists can get into to generate income from their music. Whoever uses a piece of music for a campaign, TV show, films and so forth needs to pay for both copyrights in the music i.e. the Publishing and The Master recording. Tshepo Diseko, head of publishing at Sheer Music Publishing explains in episode 25 of Bread4Soul CONVOS, that in some cases a music user (e.g. owner of a campaign) might opt to re-record a piece of music in order to exempt themselves from paying costs for the master recording, in this way they only are liable for publishing costs.

The ownership of The Master recording is also pivotal in music sampling, where another artist uses a recording owned by another artist or entity, to create a new song for themselves. There are many copyright infringement case studies because the correct processes for clearing samples were not followed. Legendary DJ & Producer Nick Holder, shared his lawsuit experience on episode 14 of Bread4Soul CONVOS. It involved his biggest song to date; Summer Daze, which became popular in South Africa after being licensed by DJ Fresh on his Fresh House Flava 4 compilation. Before the lawsuit, Nick was receiving large amounts in royalties from the sales of his global hit song, the largest he’d ever received from a single song. Unfortunately for him, he had illegally sampled Pat Metheney’s Slip Away, and years later he got slapped with a massive lawsuit and had to pay back every cent and more. He also had to pay two expensive lawyers to help him with the legal battle. Sampling has played an important role in modern music (especially in Hip Hop), but I believe it is better done legally, by requesting permission and where applicable paying the necessary fees to the legal owners of the music.

The Contract 

A basic Master Recording contract will include the following:

• Name of Artist, Song(s) or Project
• Who is paying for the recording of the project and how much
• Who will own the master copyright and for how long 

Some well-established singers and songwriters have sold their music copyrights to private entities for hundreds of millions of dollars in certain cases. All this is possible because those artists had ownership of their copyrights.