"Captain Hook's Bounty: Juice Your Song"
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Music Publishers |
Piracy, taken from the dictionary, means "the unauthorized reproduction or use of a copyrighted book, recording, television program, patented invention, trademarked product, etc." or anything that constitutes a product exclusively from the grey matter inside your cranium.
Piracy has a very long history. Records state that it started when radio stations started playing records over the radio and these performances were not paid, or sometimes the songs were acquired illegally. If they do have the album or the track, the songwriter and the artist does not get paid. It is understandable to pay the station for promoting your track, but it is a different deal if they play the track to gain audience share without acknowledging the people responsible for the song.
Performances is one of the legal rights a songwriter is granted. Live performances by an artist are paid, songwriters are not. And they really took a beating, not getting paid for the song that they labored to write. Big bummer -- Grand theft audio.
But concerned people lobbied and worked with Congress to change legislature to ensure that radio stations equitably tracked airplay and the people responsible for the song played be paid for their intellectual rights on the song.
But new age piracy started with the proliferation of technology to replicate an original, high priced album into millions of copies that may be sold dirt cheap. Never mind that the copy is not of high quality, what matters to someone who has but snack money is to buy that album at firesale price, legitimate or not.
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Brian Cook is a freelance writer whose articles on music and songwriting have appeared on many websites.
You can find more of these at SongwritersGuide.com.
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