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Termination of Transfer – Part 1

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Termination of Transfer - Part 1 by Joshua Graubart{5:24 minutes to read} It takes money to make money. For most of modern history, artists seeking mass-market success have had to partner with “production companies”—record labels, publishers, and film studios—in order to get their work in front of the public.

Though technology has in recent years reduced the burden of that requirement a bit, that very easing has also unleashed a flood of creative work in the market (much of it of indifferent quality) and mainstream success still—perhaps now more than ever—requires funds and expertise in production and promotion. It is instructive, for example, to note that in the past 20 years, only one record—Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’s 2013 Thrift Shop—has topped the Billboard Hot 100 without the backing of a major record label. Read more

Public Performance of Music: Dramatic, or Non-Dramatic?

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Public Performance of Music: Dramatic, or Non-Dramatic? by Joshua Graubart“On entering an opera or concert hall in Paris you come face to face with a long counter, presided over by three gentlemanly-looking individuals in evening dress, to whom your ticket is given, they replacing it with another, by which you are seated.”
— New York Musical Courier, Oct. 1894.

{4:06 minutes to read} Two of these Parisian gentlemen were representatives of two different French performing rights societies (PROs). (The third, incidentally, was a representative of the Parisian public hospital system, which was then supported by a performance tax.) “Each,” as the Courier explained, was present “to figure his receipts for the day.”  Read more

The Right of Public Performance

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The Right of Public Performance by Joshua Graubart{3:40 minutes to read}

Among the exclusive rights accorded to copyright holders is the right to perform their works publicly, or to permit others to do so.

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