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A sound recording is a reliance on a series of sounds that does not go with an audiovisual work. Copyright in sound recording is more limited than copyright in other works- it includes the right to perform the work to the public, but only using a “Digital sound recording”. Performing the sound recording in public in an interchangeable manner does not involve the copyright in the sound recording.
When a sound recording is conditional on a musical work, several uses of the sound recording include the musical work. In such instances, if a license is required, it must be obtained from the rights holder of the work.
In India and globally Copyright aims at securing the right of the owner over the original ideas. This gives the right to authors, producers and writers the right to earn or reap returns from their work. Copyright of an idea or imagination cannot be done, the law projects the expression or the manifestation of the idea. This leads to copyright of literary work like books, dramas, scripts, music, lyrics, computer programmes etc. Thus a musical composition, or a sound recording or an original composition can be granted copyright in India. Copyright also protects dramatic, cinematographic work.
The only criteria is that the work should be in tangible form i.e. the creation should be in such a medium that can be felt, heard or touched through ordinary senses. So musical work being expressed and written in musical notes is eligible for copyright protection.
Copyright of a sound recording and musical notes can easily be copyrighted in India, the only condition is the musical work or sound recording must be original and must be reduced to a form that is printed, reduced to writing or graphically produced or reproduced.
In case of a sound recording and composition, as a general rule, the copyright does not exist unless the work is first published in India, or if the work is published outside of India Unless the author is a citizen of India. For unpublished work, the author must be a citizen of India at time of making of work.
Copyright of a musical work consists of other elements- such as lyrics under music can be protected a literary work, for sound copyright of musical work is to be done, however, two separate copyrights in same work can exist where each owner of the copyright work retains exclusive ownership over their specific work.
At the onset, it must be clarified that in case of a musical work,- the copyright act considers the ‘Composer' of the musical work to be the author, capable of being granted the benefits of copyright protection. If the sound recording and composition are done under contractual terms, by commissioning a lyricists, singer etc. the employer who commissions the agent is considered to be first owner of the copyright. Following are the advantages of getting copyright of a sound recording-
The procedure for registration of sound recording in India is as follows-
Following are the documents required for copyright of a sound recording in India-
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