Research Guides: Music Business: Copyright and Licensing

Subject headings

When searching in the library catalog for materials related to music copyright and licensing, use these subject headings:

Copyright --Music
Copyright --Music --United States
Copyright --Royalties
Copyright --Music -- Economic aspects
Copyright --Sound recordings --United States
Entertainers --Legal status, laws, etc. --United States
Sound recordings --Pirated editions
Copyright licenses --United States
Music publishing --United States

Copyright and Licensing

Black's Law Dictionary
Black's Law Dictionary is the definitive legal resource for lawyers, law students and laypeople alike. Edited by the worlds foremost legal lexicographer, Bryan A. Garner, Blacks Law Dictionary is known for its clear and precise legal definitions, substantive accuracy, and stylistic clarity making it the most cited legal dictionary in print.

ASCAP
ASCAP is a membership association of more than 330,000 U.S. composers, songwriters, lyricists, and music publishers of every kind of music. ASCAP protects the rights of its members by licensing and distributing royalties for the non-dramatic public performances of their copyrighted works. ASCAP's licensees encompass all who want to perform copyrighted music publicly.
ASCAP Title Database
The Database contains information on all compositions in the ASCAP repertory which have appeared in any of ASCAP's domestic surveys, including foreign compositions licensed by ASCAP in the United States.
BMI
BMI is a performing right organization: It collects license fees on behalf of its songwriters, composers and music publishers and distributes them as royalties to those members whose works have been performed.
Harry Fox Agency
Established by the National Music Publisher's Association to act as an information source, clearinghouse and monitoring service for licensing musical copyrights.
HFA licenses the largest percentage of the mechanical and digital uses of music in the United States on CDs, digital services, records, tapes and imported phonorecords.
Public Domain Music
Lists public domain songs and music, royalty free music recordings you can license, and public domain sheet music reprints.
SESAC Repertory Database
The SESAC repertory database contains works in the SESAC repertory for which SESAC, Inc. has compiled information from various sources. The database lists songs or compositions, titles, composers, authors and publisher information on musical compositions including copyrighted arrangements of public domain works. Information updated regularly and may change on a daily basis.
US Copyright Office
Information about online copyright registration option; application forms for copyright registration; links to the copyright law; online copyright records cataloged since 1978; and much more

ASCAP Headlines

Oyez.org

Oyez.org
Oyez (pronounced OH-yay)—a free law project from Cornell’s Legal Information Institute (LII), Justia, and Chicago-Kent College of Law—is a multimedia archive devoted to making the Supreme Court of the United States accessible to everyone. It is the most complete and authoritative source for all of the Court’s audio since the installation of a recording system in October 1955.