Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>The legal institution of copyright is a structural pillar of the twentieth- and twenty-first-century popular music industry. This is true internationally, but the U.S. Copyright Act of 1909 is an early and influential expression of the modern copyright regime. Designed to balance the interests of older, print-based music publishers and producers of new media (piano rolls, cylinder and disc recordings), the 1909 Act codified “musical works” (e.g., songs) and their “mechanical reproductions” (e.g., sound recordings) as distinct orders of legal and economic entity. Additionally, performing rights organizations (ASCAP, BMI) created a mechanism for the collection and distribution of royalties from for-profit uses of copyrighted songs. Crucial features of the resulting system include (1) statutory payments of mechanical royalties to songwriters and publishers by companies that record their copyrighted songs, and related payments of performance and broadcast royalties; (2) a business norm of shared ownership of song copyrights between writers and publishers; and (3) compulsory licensing provisions that, once a song has been recorded, require copyright holders to allow additional recordings (i.e., “cover versions”) by any artist and label who can pay the required mechanical royalties. The present chapter describes the historical origins and ongoing operation of this system, which has now functioned continuously for over a century. Despite successive changes in the style, methodology, and technology of popular music, and in the law itself, the copyright regime continues to shape the career choices, economic prospects, and self-conception of working musicians and songwriters.</jats:p>