# How do you register works based on, "public domain," music?



## rJames (Sep 16, 2015)

I wonder about this both when registering copyright (I guess you can just put multiple writers) and registering with a PRO.

Let's say I wrote a horror cue that is based on Mozart's "Twinkle, twinkle," (I know that's not his name for it)... and I'm not using the lyrics BTW.

My cue starts to vary quickly but just by going into non-standard harmonies and then changing the melody to make it more demented.

Thanks,
Ron


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## Joe_SampleCraft (Sep 16, 2015)

I'd be interested finding about about this as I've done something similar. For copyright, I think this is considered a "derivative work"?


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## Daryl (Sep 16, 2015)

Just put your name down, and be done with it.

D


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## rJames (Sep 16, 2015)

Daryl, concise but unclear.
Are you saying that since it is public domain, I just put my name as writer, "and be done with it?"


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## Daryl (Sep 16, 2015)

That's what I would do. Particularly for commercial music. Who cares, apart from the broadcaster, and what they don't know won't hurt them. 

The reasoning behind this is that in the UK, for example, PRS claims 100% Broadcast Royalties for an arrangement, but in Canada I think it is only 25%. Therefore, if you don't want to give away potential income, forget about the arrangement side of it, and call it a composition.

D


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## reddognoyz (Sep 16, 2015)

Label "traditional", arraigned by xxxxx" in the cue sheet. Or do as above as per Daryl, but that has come back to me more than once and required a revised cuesheet, when the song was commonplace. (That said, I am using an traditional and hopefully relatively obscure irish hornpipe in a show I'm working on now and I'm just going to label it as a cue on the show and be done with it, sleeping dogs will hopefully lie)


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## wpc982 (Sep 16, 2015)

Who is hurt by your claiming that the PD work is your own? Every other composer who gets royalties from your licensing organization ...


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## Daryl (Sep 16, 2015)

wpc982 said:


> Who is hurt by your claiming that the PD work is your own? Every other composer who gets royalties from your licensing organization ...


I think you'd better explain what you mean, becuase as it stands you make no sense.

D


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## chillbot (Sep 16, 2015)

wpc982 said:


> Who is hurt by your claiming that the PD work is your own? Every other composer who gets royalties from your licensing organization ...



What he means is BMI (for example) has a set amount of $$$ that gets distributed to their composers each quarter so if you put down a PD work as your own, and make an extra say, $8 or something... that's $8 less that every other composer has access to so 100s of thousands of other composers could all be potentially shorted... you know... $0.00008 cents each or something. It's a fair argument in a way but PD comes up so rarely I can't see it making an ounce of difference.


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## chillbot (Sep 16, 2015)

What I normally do is if I feel like it's my own arrangement of a PD piece and is sufficiently unique I put my name as the composer. If I feel like I've done basically a mock-up of a PD piece then I don't put down any composers or publishers and just put "public domain", no one gets paid. It probably works out to 50/50... and really it doesn't come up all that often. If I put in the effort and create a great track and arrangement of a PD piece I have no problem getting paid for it, and I've never had any cue sheets get sent back to me.


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## sleepy hollow (Sep 16, 2015)

chillbot said:


> What he means is BMI (for example)...further explanation...


Yep, that's how I understand it.

But the way the PROs distribute money isn't fair or transparent anyway - at least GEMA isn't fair or transparent.


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## chillbot (Sep 16, 2015)

The other thing is as composers we should all support each other, in theory. As long as someone isn't abusing the system, I don't feel "hurt" that you put your name on a PD piece, especially since you probably spent as long on it as any other track. I want you to get paid for your work, and I think you should. I'm sure everyone doesn't feel the same way but I'm betting if you took a poll of everyone at my PRO, close to 90% would say yes put your name on that track even if it means my check is going to be $0.000008 less.


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## wpc982 (Sep 16, 2015)

Yes, chillbot described it accurately. Sleepy-hollow, while you might be right, that doesn't seem to me to be a reason why we each individually should have less moral fortitude. Stuart Kollmorgen took $0.0008 from me? I don't like it, but there are many bigger fish to fry. If I ever have the position to hire and fire a composer, Stuart will lose way more money .. but I probably won't ever have it, that's not my direction.


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## sleepy hollow (Sep 16, 2015)

wpc982 said:


> Sleepy-hollow, while you might be right, that doesn't seem to me to be a reason why we each individually should have less moral fortitude


Agreed. That was just a comment on how I view PROs in general.

I've been through tough times, financially I mean, and I've had jobs that paid exceptionally well, but in the end it's all about having a good time. I have no interest in taking advantage of my fellow collegues, so I kinda regularly 'give up' some money or some other sort of financial/personal gain. Many of the projects/jobs I do, rely on good and fair collaboration with all sorts of people, so I learned not squeeze every penny out of something very early in my 'professional life'.

Can't buy happiness, right?


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## reddognoyz (Sep 16, 2015)

okay okay uncle : ) point taken. What I started to add to my post, and in retrospect should have, was the "sleeping dogs lie" part. If I say to the production company "hey I'm using this old folk song for a scene in a show" they will not know the song,( like they would jingle bells), not be comfortable with the pd-ness of the song, and will have to run it throug legal at the network, legal would have to research it, etc...not a good road to go down I promise. Or they may just not let me use it. If I put it in the cue sheet as xxxx trad. arr by me... they will have the same reactions only the sirens will go off because it's already in the mix master for the show. Lose-Lose. The point wasn't to garner more back end. Didn't even cross my mind.


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## chillbot (Sep 16, 2015)

I firmly believe in not "milking the system", though I certainly know a number of people who seem to put way too much thought into getting every possible penny they can. They don't seem super happy.

I started a thread about the ethics of this a while back, it fizzled out. I'm not trying to milk the system or take money away from anyone else, I legitimately think that I should get royalties and you should get royalties if you or I write a beautiful arrangement of a public domain track. Look sometimes they need an arrangement of "Anchor's Aweigh" and you find a MIDI file on the internet somewhere and you pull it up and orchestrate it and call it good. I've done this and I've just listed it as public domain, no one gets royalties on this. Other times you spend all day writing a killer arrangement and/or score it to picture and/or even make it seem like the musicians on screen are playing the song. Should you not get paid because the producers wanted use a particular song? Now go one level deeper, how is this different than using any of the millions of loops at our disposal? Let's say I hold down a pad in Xosphere and then I put a Zebra arpeggio behind it and then I pull up a Stylus groove and the whole thing is bad ass and really tense but I'm using three things that three other people created. And I'm putting my name on it and making royalties. Just something to think about.


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## Daryl (Sep 17, 2015)

chillbot said:


> What he means is BMI (for example) has a set amount of $$$ that gets distributed to their composers each quarter so if you put down a PD work as your own, and make an extra say, $8 or something... that's $8 less that every other composer has access to so 100s of thousands of other composers could all be potentially shorted... you know... $0.00008 cents each or something. It's a fair argument in a way but PD comes up so rarely I can't see it making an ounce of difference.


Or looking at it another way, if you don't put yourself down as writer, you are possibly doing all the work that a composer does, but not receiving the same royalties, because the tune was originally a folk song. So are BMI actually saying that Rachmaninoff doesn't deserve full Royalties for his Paganini variations?

The other thing that I would ask about is that you mention a set amount. How is that calculated? I thought that the cue sheet generated the income. If there is no music n the show, the broadcaster doesn't pay anything. is that not the case?

D


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## Daryl (Sep 17, 2015)

chillbot said:


> I started a thread about the ethics of this a while back, it fizzled out.


You are exactly right. Anyone who has ever used a pre-packaged loop. Or an evolving synth pad as a starting point (or ending) for a track has no moral high ground.

D


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## chillbot (Sep 17, 2015)

Daryl said:


> The other thing that I would ask about is that you mention a set amount. How is that calculated? I thought that the cue sheet generated the income. If there is no music n the show, the broadcaster doesn't pay anything. is that not the case?



With BMI (just for example, because I am BMI), their deal with networks is not dependent on the exact amount of minutes of music on the cue sheets as you say... they have blanket deals in place with everyone. BMI just reported a record earning of $1 billion. After expenses, that money is paid out to the composers. The amount you earn, in part, is based on how many total minutes of music BMI composers had on the air during that quarter. It is not that simple but as sleepy hollow pointed out it's also not that transparent, no one seems to know exactly how PROs come up with these numbers.

It may be network-dependent. For example 10 years or so ago ASCAP was paying 2x more per minute than BMI for music airing on FOX. I know one composer who had roughly ~12 hours of television a week on FOX made the jump and switched from BMI to ASCAP. As soon as he did that, taking his 12 hours of shows with him, the rate for FOX on BMI made a huge jump for the rest of us still at BMI. Again, it's not that simple but it's the best I can explain/understand it.


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## Daryl (Sep 17, 2015)

chillbot, thanks for the explanation. With PRS it is much more transparent, so I was just curious about BMI.

D


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## Daryl (Sep 19, 2015)

Just to add to this discussion, PRS has now drastically altered the weighting of payment per minute from their previous model. The new versions means that the amount paid goes up for Network, but down drastically for Regional. I think that this is to try to have a model that more closely resembles the streaming model, where size of audience (number of plays) is supposed to make a difference.

D


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## alanb (Sep 20, 2015)

rJames said:


> I wonder about this both when registering copyright (I guess you can just put multiple writers) and registering with a PRO.
> 
> Let's say I wrote a horror cue that is based on Mozart's "Twinkle, twinkle," (I know that's not his name for it)... and I'm not using the lyrics BTW.
> 
> My cue starts to vary quickly but just by going into non-standard harmonies and then changing the melody to make it more demented.





As far as registering Copyrights is concerned — assuming, of course, that you do not have your own IP counsel — always go straight to the source..................... 

For example, see http://copyright.gov/circs/circ14.pdf ("Copyright in Derivative Works and Compilations"):

[...]​
*Copyright Protection in Derivative Works

The copyright in a derivative work covers only the additions, changes, or other new material appearing for the first time in the work.* Protection does not extend to any preexisting material, that is, previously published or previously registered works or *works in the public domain* or owned by a third party.

As a result, it is not possible to extend the length of protection for a copyrighted work by creating a derivative work. *A work that has fallen into the public domain, that is, a work that is no longer protected by copyright, is also an underlying “work” from which derivative authorship may be added*, but the copyright in the derivative work will not extend to the public domain material, and the use of the public domain material in a derivative work will not prevent anyone else from using the same public domain work for another derivative work.

[...]

The following points should be helpful for those registering derivative works. The categories specified appear on copyright applications.

*Author* · Name the author or authors of the copyrightable material being claimed. Ordinarily, the author is the person who actually created the work. Where the work or any contribution to it is a work made for hire, the employer is considered the author. *Do not name the author of previously published or registered work(s) or public-domain material incorporated into the derivative work unless that person is also the author of the new material.*

[...]

*Limitation of claim* · Complete this portion of the application if the work being registered contains a substantial amount of material that

• was previously published,
• was previously registered in the U. S. Copyright Office,
• *is in the public domain*, or
• is owned by a third party.​*Material excluded* · In this portion of the application, give a brief identification of *any preexisting work or works that the work is based on or incorporates*.

*New material included* · Briefly, in general terms, describe *all new copyrightable authorship* covered by the copyright claim for which registration is sought.

[...]​[*emphasis* added]


IAAL, although I am not yours.....


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## rJames (Sep 21, 2015)

All good. Thanks Alan.


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