How many Copyrights are involved in a Song or a VideoClip?

Often producing a song with some artist, this question is often given.
The answer is far away to be simple, because Copyright is quite articulated.
Many ones are just thinking about the Author Rights, which is part of the Copyright, but it's not all.

here I wanted just to write few lines about this very complex argument. I know it's required much ore, but here I just collect the basic information many Independent Artists need to know about. Thus only specific to that case.


SONG (TUNE)
In a song are involved Composers, Authors, but also Arrangers, Adapters Editors, Publishers and then also: Producers, Distributors etc.

Each part involved, has is own Copyright.

Composers and Authors own what is called Authorship, and they have their percentage of Copyright into the song.

But if an adapter and/or an arrange is involved, they get also their part, for the job they did.

Authors in a song, are also called Lyricist.

When a CD is bought by a client on a shop, or a song is downloaded via iTunes, the price the client pays, contains the Rights for everybody.

The Publisher/Editor, normally shares the 50% of the Rights and becomes the Copyright Holder (the manager of the Copyright), of one or more Composers/Authors of the song.
the remaining 50% is generally given or shared by the Composers/Authors/Arrangers/Adapters.

Who shares all the money, are Societies like SABAM, SIAE, SACEM, ASCAP, BMI etc

But recently, are introduced also other Rights: Performing and Production Rights.
The Producer own the 100% of the Production Rights, as well as the Performer


Those Rights are called Neighboring Rights, and they are called so, because not expressly foreseen in the International Copyright Law, but are agreements, and consequently: Laws, made by some Country. In Europe there is BeNeLux, Italy, France UK, and other ones, they recognize these Rights.

And there are Societies that are collecting and sharing these Rights. In Belgium is SIMIM for the Audio and IMAGIA for the Video/Film, both for Producers. There are also Societies that collects Rights for the Interpreters

Thus, as you can notice, in a Released Song, there are many Copyright Levels.


VIDEOCLIP
When you create a song, and you make a viceoclip that illustrates that song, other persons are entering in the scene of the Copyright.

The first is the Producer that owns the 100% of Production Rights.
Then there is the Director, the Filmmaker (Implementer), the Editor

All these persons are getting Author Rights from SABAM, SIAE, SACEM, ASCAP, BMI etc

Soundtrack Composers, don't perceive any Author Rights from the Video itself, but only from the soundtrack. Thus they don't own any percentage strictly related to the Footage.

Interpreters can, have some Neighboring Rights, if the Country in which they are, has agreements for this and the Interpreter is belonging to an Association for that purpose.


EXAMPLE for a TUNE
If you publish a tune on iTunes, Spotify etc, they take the 15-30% of the price.
Of the remaining 70-85%, the 30% goes to the Distributor (the collector that iTunes, Spotify etc, enable to upload your Tune)
The remaining part is shared with the Producer - Neighboring Rights - (which takes the 25-30%) and the rest goes to the Author Rights of Composer(s)/Autor(s)/Arranger(s)/Adapter(s)

I know it's very few cents, but the goal of these platform is to sell a big quantity of them, thus to get a lot of cents per song


CONCLUSION
As you can see, there is a lot to tell more about this argument, because due the so many persons involved, and so many Copyrights, the legislation thus the argument, is huge.
But this should hep to focus on what we, as Artists, need to roughly know about.