Two Copyrights, One Song: Music Licensing, Sampling, and the Clearance Maze
By Casey Scott McKay ·
Every recorded song carries two independent copyrights — one in the musical work under 17 U.S.C. § 102(a)(2) and one in the sound recording under § 102(a)(7) — owned by different people, administered by different institutions, and licensed through entirely different machinery. This article explains that structure and everything that follows from it: the Section 115 mechanical compulsory license and its rebuild by the Music Modernization Act into a blanket license administered by the Mechanical Licensing Collective; the public performance right, the performing rights organizations, and the 1941 ASCAP and BMI consent decrees that still govern how most music gets licensed; synchronization and master use licenses, and why no compulsory license exists for putting a song to picture; and the narrow digital performance right in sound recordings under §§ 106(6) and 114, with the terrestrial-radio hole it leaves. It then works through sampling, including the unresolved split between Bridgeport and VMG Salsoul, the interpolation workaround and its own risks, and what the Blurred Lines and Led Zeppelin appeals actually changed about musical-similarity exposure. A final part covers pre-1972 recordings, the state-law era the Flo & Eddie cases closed, and the federal regime the CLASSICS Act installed at § 1401. It is doctrinal throughout; the step-by-step clearance workflow lives in the companion guide and checklist.
IP and Technology > Copyright | Article | Published 15 September 2023 - Updated 30 June 2025 | Casey Scott McKay - marksy.us
Summary. Every recorded song is two copyrighted works stacked on top of each other — the musical composition under 17 U.S.C. § 102(a)(2) and the sound recording under § 102(a)(7) — usually owned by different parties and licensed through completely different systems. This article explains that split and what falls out of it: the Section 115 mechanical compulsory license and the blanket license and Mechanical Licensing Collective the Music Modernization Act built on top of it; performance rights, the PROs, and the 1941 consent decrees still governing ASCAP and BMI; sync and master use licenses, and why nobody can force a publisher to let you put a song to picture; and the deliberately narrow digital performance right in sound recordings under §§ 106(6) and 114. It then takes up sampling — the live circuit split between Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films and VMG Salsoul, LLC v. Ciccone, the economics of clearance, and the interpolation workaround — before turning to the musical-similarity cases from Blurred Lines to Skidmore, and to pre-1972 recordings under the CLASSICS Act. The procedure lives in the companion guide and checklist; this is the law those tools implement.
Keywords: music licensing · sound recording copyright · musical composition · section 115 mechanical license · music modernization act · mechanical licensing collective · synchronization license · master use license · performing rights organizations · ascap and bmi consent decrees · digital performance right · soundexchange · sampling · bridgeport v. dimension films · vmg salsoul v. ciccone · de minimis copying · interpolation · skidmore v. led zeppelin · pre-1972 sound recordings · classics act
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