QWANZ

Since 1978, record labels have enjoyed profits from releasing hit albums like like Bruce Springsteen’s “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” Billy Joel’s “52nd Street,” the Doobie Brothers’ “Minute by Minute,” Kenny Rogers’s “Gambler” and Funkadelic’s “One Nation Under a Groove”. However, a a little-noted provision in the United States copyright law may just allow many artists to reclaim ownership of their recordings. It looks like that when the copyright law was revi...   >>>

Since 1978, record labels have enjoyed profits from releasing hit albums like like Bruce Springsteen’s “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” Billy Joel’s “52nd Street,” the Doobie Brothers’ “Minute by Minute,” Kenny Rogers’s “Gambler” and Funkadelic’s “One Nation Under a Groove”. However, a a little-noted provision in the United States copyright law may just allow many artists to reclaim ownership of their recordings. It looks like that when the copyright law was revised in the mid-1970s, musicians, like creators of other works of art, were granted “termination rights,” which allow them to regain control of their work after 35 years, so long as they apply at least two years in advance. Recordings from 1978 are the first to fall under the purview of the law, but in a matter of months, hits from 1979, like “The Long Run” by the Eagles and “Bad Girls” by Donna Summer, will be in the same situation — and then, as the calendar advances, every other master recording once it reaches the 35-year mark.



However, record labels may contest these reclamations based on arguments that record labels own the rights to those songs just as companies have rights over specific outputs of its employees in the course of their working for the company.