5. Live Performances

Public Performance vs Public Broadcast & Communication

Everytime the recording of a song is played in public i.e. on the radio, at an event, festival…etc two things happen:

• The sound recording is publicly broadcast or communicated.
• The composition embedded in the sound recording is publicly performed (by the artist of the recording).

Therefore, every time a recording of a song is played in public, two types of royalties will be generated from the airplay, pertaining to the “exploitation” of each of the 2 copyrights attached to any song, the composition and sound recording copyright.

The right to broadcast or communicate* the sound recording forms part of what is called Neighboring rights and the right to publicly perform the composition forms a part of what is called Publishing rights.

Broadcast vs Communication:

Broadcasting is a specific technology (ie FM broadcasting, webcasting etc) and doesn’t apply when the music is played by a DJ on a sound system at a club (for example). In this latter case, we use the world communicated rather than broadcasted as this is a separate right pertaining on a different “media” of use. (basically the recording is being played on a different technology than broadcast technology and is considered a different type of right).