Old singer wants lyrics

[Music Attorney]

Originally Posted by crijan

I believe during a Music Law discussion at SXSW a couple of years ago the speaker mentioned that once lyrics are joined to a melody to make a song, they are forever linked and can't be "unlinked" by writing new lyrics or music to the old music or lyrics.

For example if you used the music of a song where one writer is credited to the music and one to the lyrics, the lyric writer would still hold rights to your new song even if his lyrics weren't used in the new version. Something about how the creation of lyrics and melody are integral to each other and inseparable. I'll see if I can find a link to this in the law.

In case you can't get to Austin for SXSW (although I highly recommend you do), my post #9 at the link below explains the concept in the quoted post above as a bit like trying to unscramble eggs.

http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showth...or#post1442010


Best,
MA

[Music Attorney]

Originally Posted by Nino Valenti

If there is no contract, you can do whatever you want.

I would not use any of the lyrics that he wrote completely or more than 50% of. I would just have the new singer do his job and come up w/some lyrics.

If there are songs that you wrote most of the lyrics to, IMO, they're yours.

This area of law is about copyright, not contract. Many rules apply regardless of whether there is a written agreement between the applicable parties. To be clear, written agreements may be able to alter the relationship between the parties (e.g., if 2 people write a song 50/50, they can certainly agree to divide it 70/30 as long as they do it in writing). Also, there are some very definite laws that control what can and can't be done in a given situation regarding musical compositions. If the musical compositions in question qualify as joint works, then I've posted about some of the dos and don'ts.

Of course, I'm strictly talking about the legal aspects of copyright law and not the practical aspects of it (e.g., enforcement).

Best,
MA

[Music Attorney]

Originally Posted by nsmar4211

This brings up an interesting dilema.......
You say you recorded after he quit-did he give you permission to use his lyrics and record them?
What you may want to do is look into royalty fees.... pay him say .09$ every CD you sell or when you perform his songs. And by "his" he had to have written more than 50% of the lyrics.

Am interested to see how the law applies on this one..... course, if all he did was lyrics and you guys did the hook/melody/etc, you could keep the song and change the words

I assume the 9 cents you reference is meant in connection with the so-called mechanical royalty. First, it's 9 cents for the whole song so the lyricist should only get a pro rata portion of that amount. Second, the mechanical royalty is really for the right to make copies of the songs. It's not applicable to performances of songs.

As far as just changing the words, see the link at my previous post above.

Best,
MA

[Music Attorney]

Originally Posted by Rick Auricchio

Technically, the songwriter must give permission for the first publication of the song. After that first publication, anyone can record and pay the mechanical royalty (is it 9c?).

If the singer wrote lyrics, he may be a co-writer. But if nobody did anything official, then he has to get a lawyer to make anything stick. Offer 9c per copy sold and he'll probably take it. I would make no higher offer.

Again, if it's a joint work with joint authors, then any of the joint authors can grant that first use license for the whole song on behalf of the other writer(s).

Best,
MA

[Music Attorney]

Sorry. Needed to up my post count.

Back to the game.

Best,
MA