Any Artist Can Legally Cover Your Song Once It Is Released. The Compulsory Licence Is Why, and It Pays a Set Rate.

Any artist can legally cover your song once you've released it, and the writer's permission isn't part of the deal — but the licence carries conditions, and a cover that skips them isn't licensed at all. Jimi Hendrix re-recorded Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" and made it the version other singers chase, and the U.S. Copyright Office teaches the cover song from exactly that example. None of those singers needed the writer charmed into a yes. The permission sits in section 115 of the Copyright Act, priced in advance, and it's been sitting there since the player-piano fight of 1909.

A released song can be covered without the writer's permission

The licence has two names in the trade — the statutory mechanical licence and the compulsory licence. A statutory licence operates by law rather than by contract, and the Copyright Office puts the consequence plainly: a musical work's copyright owner can't normally say "no" when every legal requirement is satisfied.

Under section 115, anyone may make and distribute phonorecords of a nondramatic musical work once phonorecords of that work have been distributed to the public in the United States under the authority of the copyright owner. A nondramatic musical work, in the Office's definition, is music — the succession of pitches and rhythm — plus any accompanying lyrics that weren't created for a motion picture or a dramatic work. Before that first authorised release, there's nothing to compel: an unreleased song stays the writer's to keep or give away, and a singer who wants it has to ask.

Two copyrights live inside every song, and a cover licenses only one of them

The musical work is the song's underlying composition, created by a songwriter or composer, lyrics included. The sound recording is the series of sounds fixed in a recording medium such as a CD or a digital file, authored generally by the performers and the producer who captures the performance. The two works face different rules, and they're commonly owned and licensed separately.

A cover touches only the composition. The Copyright Office defines a cover as a previously recorded musical work re-recorded into a new sound recording, and only the musical work being re-recorded is implicated. Some covers imitate the earlier recording; others bring different styles and sounds and build new arrangements on the same bones. The covering artist makes a fresh recording — duplicating somebody else's sound recording sits outside the licence entirely.

Congress built the licence in 1909 because it feared a monopoly

In 1908 the Supreme Court held, in White-Smith Publishing Co. v. Apollo Co., that perforated piano rolls weren't copies of the music they played, and copyright owners came to Congress seeking an exclusive right over mechanical reproduction. Congress granted the right in the Copyright Act of 1909 and refused to let it harden into a monopoly: alongside the right, it created the first compulsory licence, allowing any person to make "similar use" of a musical work on payment of a royalty of two cents for "each such part manufactured." And the price froze for sixty-nine years: the two-cent rate remained in effect until January 1, 1978, acting as a ceiling in privately negotiated licences — Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters's account, in a 2004 statement the Copyright Office still publishes.

A phonorecord is the copy the licence counts, and a video isn't one

The Copyright Office starts with the objects on your shelf: a cassette tape, a vinyl disc and a compact disc are phonorecords. Behind them sits the fuller definition — a material object in which sounds are fixed and from which they can be reproduced or communicated, with the aid of a machine or device.

One exclusion does heavy work for every singer with a camera: a phonorecord doesn't include sounds accompanying a motion picture or another audiovisual work, so a cover on video steps outside section 115, and the Copyright Office warns that different or additional licences may be needed for video covers.

For CDs and vinyl, the notice comes first and the payments come monthly

The steps are exact. First comes a Notice of Intention to Obtain a Compulsory License — an NOI — served before or within thirty days after making the phonorecords, and before distributing any. Service goes to the owner or the owner's authorised agent when the Office's public records identify the owner and an address; where they don't, the NOI is filed with the Copyright Office instead.

Then the money moves on a calendar: royalty payments, with a monthly statement of account, must reach the owner or the owner's authorised agent on or before the twentieth day of each month for every phonorecord made and distributed under the licence, and an annual statement follows. Miss the money and the licence carries an ejector seat — the owner may give written notice, and unless the default is remedied within thirty days, the compulsory licence is automatically terminated.

The rate itself never gets negotiated across a desk: the Copyright Royalty Board sets the rates and terms for the compulsory licences pursuant to an administrative proceeding, as the Copyright Office's circulars state. The writer can't bargain the number up and the covering artist can't bargain it down — and anyone who'd rather negotiate a private deal still can.

Downloads and streams run on a blanket licence, not a song-by-song notice

Digital deliveries split from the physical track in 2018. The Music Modernization Act, signed on October 11, 2018, updated section 115 and established a new blanket licence for digital music providers covering permanent downloads, limited downloads and interactive streaming — the digital phonorecord deliveries, or DPDs. From January 1, 2021, the Act updated how rightsholders are paid for interactive streaming. Rightsholders register with the Mechanical Licensing Collective, The MLC, to be paid by providers using that blanket licence. The Copyright Office no longer accepts section 115 notices of intention for a DPD, and the song-by-song process survives only for phonorecords that aren't DPDs — the CDs and vinyl the system was built on.

The Harry Fox Agency sells small-run licences through Songfile

The Harry Fox Agency's published guidance splits the traffic by size: limited quantities — fewer than 2,500 units — go through HFA's Songfile, and Songfile licences must be pre-paid at the time of purchase. More than 2,500 units means an HFA Licensing account and the eMechanical application, with quarterly royalty reporting and payments. HFA's homepage puts it in one fan-sized sentence: Songfile helps you license cover songs for CDs, downloads, ringtones and streams. The writer still gets paid on every copy, and the covering artist gets a receipt instead of a refusal.

You can rearrange a cover, but you can't rewrite the song underneath it

The arrangement freedom is generous and fenced. A licensee may make a musical arrangement of the work to the extent necessary to conform it to the style or manner of interpretation of the performance involved — a country read of a rock song, a ballad slowed to a crawl. Two fences hold. The arrangement can't change the basic melody or fundamental character of the work, and the licensee can't claim copyright protection in the arrangement as a derivative work. Rearrange the furniture all night; the house stays the writer's.

The licence covers these uses, and it leaves these uses out

The closing artifact, printed whole, from Circular 73A:

Covered, once the statutory requirements are met, including payment of royalties: - Make and distribute phonorecords of the eligible nondramatic musical work, for distribution to the public for private use - Authorise others to engage in the making and distributing of the phonorecords - Make a musical arrangement of the work to conform it to the style or manner of interpretation of the performance

Not covered — each one needs the copyright owner's permission: - Make, reproduce or distribute a sound recording publicly distributed in phonorecords - Distribute phonorecords for background music systems, jukeboxes, broadcasting or any other public use - Change the basic melody or fundamental character of the work in the arrangement - Claim copyright protection in your arrangement as a derivative work

The writer gives up the veto and keeps the royalty; the covering singer gives up the rewrite and keeps the song. A law written for piano rolls priced the permission before the argument could start.