Below is a glossary of industry terms, associations and commonly-used acronyms. Where possible web links have been included.
360 Deal
This is a type of agreement where an artist signs with a company that has a stake in several of their interests other than recorded music – for example touring and merchandise.
AAC
Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) is a digital file format similar to MP3. Its probable best known use is as the default encoding system used by Apple’s iTunes.
A&R
The A&R (Artist and Repertoire) department in a record company is responsible for spotting, nurturing and developing new artists as well as acting as a point of contact for existing ones. They work closely with the artists throughout recording projects, in conjunction with managers, producers, songwriters and other musicians.
Aggregator (digital)
Digital aggregators (such as The Orchard or PIAS Digital) act as distributors in the online world, supplying downloads from labels and artists to online retailers (such as iTunes, Napster etc).
AIM
The Association of Independent Music is the UK record industry trade body specifically for independent labels. www.musicindie.com
APRS
The Association of Professional Recording Services serves the audio industry. Its members are recording studios, post-production houses, mastering, replication and other music facilities and providers of education and training, as well as audio freelance engineers, manufacturers suppliers and consultants. www.aprs.co.uk
Assignment
Copyright can be assigned to a label or publisher, or a third party such as a royalty collection society for a period of time. This allows the assignee to act on behalf the copyright owner to issue licenses and collect royalties within the terms of the assignment.
BASCA
BASCA (British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors) is a trade association acting on behalf of songwriters, lyricists and composers of all genres of music. www.basca.org.uk
Barcodes
A barcode is a machine-readable number used for various purposes in manufacture, retail and commercial use of a music product. Barcodes don’t just identify CDs at the counter, they are also used for chart returns and increasingly digital retailers insist on barcoding for downloadable products too. Please see our information sheet for further details.
Blanket License
A license (usually granted by a collecting society) that gives an organisation authorisation to use all of the recordings or songs that are owned or controlled by the collecting society in a specified way.
Bootleg
Bootlegs are unsanctioned releases usually consisting of live, demo or ‘rare’ recordings. They can also take the form of unauthorised DJ mixes, using material not licensed from the copyright holder.
BRIT Awards
Launched in 1977, the BRIT Awards are the annual showcase for the UK music industry. Both the BRITs and sister event the Classical BRITs celebrate not just the biggest successes in music but also operate as an important platform to introduce and promote new talent. The main BRITs show is televised in the UK each February. It is also exported to foreign markets to showcase the cream of British talent and is an essential component in raising UK acts’ profiles and sales internationally. www.brits.co.uk
BRIT School
The BRIT School opened in September 1991, and is a joint venture between The BRIT Trust and the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF). Based at Selhurst in Croydon, the school is the only non fee-paying performing arts school in the UK. It is designed for students aged 14-19 who wish to acquire a broad, balanced education, offering greater specialisation in Performing Arts and Arts Technology as they progress through the four years. www.brit.croydon.sch.uk
BRIT Trust
The BRIT Trust is the charitable arm of the BPI, set up in 1989 and entirely funded by the music business. Since its inception, over £13million has been donated to various charities. Substantial profits from the BRIT Awards goes to the BRIT Trust – to date, over £10m has been raised by the BRIT Awards alone. www.brittrust.co.uk
Clearance
For the right to use music, in most circumstances it must be ‘cleared’ (ie authorised) by the copyright owners. Clearance is also needed for copying, not just for commercial use. It is normally negotiated through licensing and collection societies, but may be through labels and publishers.
Counterfeit
This is the term used to describe a physical product (CD or LP) that resembles an official release but is actually an unauthorised version not produced by the copyright holder.
Collection societies
Collection societies issue licenses to companies using music (for example radio stations) and share the resulting royalty fees among copyright owners (normally record labels, publishers, writers and performers). Examples of UK collecting societies include PPL and PRS For Music.
Copyright
Copyright is a property right which arises at the moment of creation of a song or sound recording. It does not need to be registered (in the UK) and gives content creators and owners the exclusive right to make copies, license and otherwise exploit their work. In music there are copyrights relating to lyrics (if applicable), music and the actual sound recording.
Distribution
Often labels will approach a distributor to act as a middleman between themselves and retailers. Traditional distribution is about taking orders for and supplying CDs (or other physical product) from record labels to retail, although their role can be more complex and they may also promote and invest in releases. Digital distributors (see ‘Aggregators’) serve online stores (such as iTunes) in a similar fashion, handling downloadable releases by many labels at the same time and ensuring they are supplied to all the different online outlets.
Download
Downloading is the process of actively receiving data to a local system (such as your computer) from a remote system (such as a webserver). Downloads are storable on a hard drive, as opposed to ‘streamed’ data which is not accessible offline.
DRM
DRM (Digital Rights Management) is a form of code embedded in some digital files to enforce certain restrictions on the repeat copying or distribution of files. While most music sold in the early years of digital retail encompassed some form of coded protection now most downloadable music is sold DRM-free.
ERA
The Entertainment Retailers Association (previously BARD) is a UK trade association representing the retail and wholesale sectors of the music, video, DVD and multimedia products industry. The acronym may also refer to the Educational Recording Agency. www.eraltd.org www.era.org.uk
Filesharing
Filesharing is the activity of trading digital files with other users over the internet. Users trade files by downloading (to obtain them) and uploading (to distribute them). This is illegal when copyrighted material is made available without the permission of the rightsholders.
FLAC
Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) is a digital file format using lossless (ie no loss of audio quality) compression. One of the other benefits is the size of the resulting file, which is typically 50-60% of the size of the original.
IFPI
IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) represents the recording industry worldwide, with a membership comprising some 1400 record companies in 72 countries and affiliated industry associations in 44 countries. IFPI's mission is to promote the value of recorded music, safeguard the rights of record producers and expand the commercial uses of recorded music in all markets where its members operate. www.ifpi.org
Indie/Independent
Indie is a broad term with many meanings. It refers to record labels, ways of doing business, styles of music and a number of philosophies. For chart purposes, ‘indie’ labels were traditionally classified as such if their product was handled by a non-major owned distributor; for the purposes of the independent chart launched in 2009 a title is eligible “if it is released on a label which is 50% or more owned by an independent (or non-major) company, irrespective of the distribution channel through which it is shipped or delivered”.
ISRC
The ISRC (International Standard Recording Code) is the international identification system for sound and music video recordings. Each ISRC is a unique and permanent identifier for a specific recording which can be permanently encoded into a product as its digital fingerprint. Encoded ISRC provide the means to automatically identify recordings for royalty payments. The agency administering the ISRC system in the UK is PPL. Please see our information sheet for more details.
Licensing
This is the process whereby the copyright holder of a song (or songs) authorises its usage by a third party. Unlike assignment, licensing will usually take place for a finite period of time. This might be in the form of allowing a song’s appearance on a compilation right through to allowing a third party to reissue an artist’s entire back catalogue in full. The terms of the agreement will cover the term of the license (for example, how long the third party is allowed to use the song(s) for) as well as what kind of recompense will be received. Licensing also covers the commercial use of repertoire in adverts, films, TV etc (see sync licensing).
Major
The original definition of a ‘major’ was a record company which also owned manufacturing and distribution facilities. The ownership and structure of all the majors has changed since the definition was first coined but still the ‘big four’ (in terms of market share – Universal, Sony, EMI and Warners) are commonly identified by this term.
Mastering
Mastering is the process of preparing the final mix of a song or album for duplication – the ‘master’ is the finalised source from which all copies of the finished product will be produced.
MCPS
MCPS (Mechanical Copyright Protection Society) sits under the broader PRS for Music brand, and is a non-profit organisation that generates revenue for its publisher and writer members through license fees levied on the use of their works. This includes sales of the music alone such as CDs and downloads, and also products which use the music as a part of their soundtrack, such as films and computer games. http://www.prsformusic.com/Pages/default.aspx
Mechanical License
A mechanical license is issued by MCPS to pay writers’ royalties for the commercial use of their compositions. While the term ‘mechanical’ is derived from the practice of licensing the use of compositions in automated pianos in the early 20th century, today these royalties are payable on the reproduction of music on many different formats such as CDs, downloads, ringtones, musical toys and computer games.
MMF
The MMF (Music Managers Forum) acts as a voice for artist managers within the music industry, provides a focus for dialogue with the Government and other industry organisations as well as between managers themselves. www.musicmanagersforum.co.uk
MP3
MP3 is a popular digital audio encoding format and is compatible with most personal music players (such as the iPod). MP3 was invented in 1987 and made publicly available from 1995; it is now the standard music file format for most digital stores in the UK.
MPA
The Music Publishers Association (MPA) is a non-profit organisation representing music publishers in the UK. It exists to safeguard their interests, and those of the writers signed to them. www.mpaonline.org.uk
Musicians’ Union
The Musicians' Union represents over thirty thousand musicians working in all sectors of the music business. As well as negotiating on behalf of their members with all the major employers in the industry, the MU offer a range of services for professional and student musicians of all ages. www.musiciansunion.org.uk
National Music Council
The National Music Council promotes the interests of the UK music industry as a whole. It facilitates the sharing of information between industry organisations and trade bodies through an annual series of lectures and debates, and provides the means for informing and influencing decision-makers. The NMC is also responsible for major research projects, including statistical research into the economic value of the UK music industry. http://www.musiced.org.uk/nmc.html
OCC
The Official Charts Company (OCC) collates sales data for the music and video industries, creating and licensing a number of different charts including the official singles and albums rundowns as used by the BBC. It gathers sales data from a wide variety of ‘bricks and mortar’ and online retailers and is a joint venture owned by BPI and ERA. www.theofficialcharts.com
P2P
P2P (Peer-To-Peer) is a way of networking computers over the internet so they can exchange files directly. P2P became more widely known through the use of filesharing systems and applications such as the original Napster and Kazaa in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Podcast
Podcasts are downloadable audio (or video) programmes that can be transferred onto portable MP3 players or watched/listened to on a computer.
PPL
PPL (Public Performance Limited) is a music service company working on behalf of performer and record company members. It licenses (and distributes the royalties generated by) sound recordings and music videos for use in broadcast, public performance and new media. http://www.ppluk.com/en/About-Us/
PPL Repertoire database
The PPL Repertoire Database (formerly CatCo) is an electronic system that collates details of recordings from record labels to help ensure accurate royalty distribution. The system also provides information to IFPI (to assist with anti-piracy activity) and the Official Charts Company (enabling digital sales to be included in the UK Charts). www.ppluk.com/Record-Companies/repertoire/
PRS For Music
Formerly known as the Performing Rights Society, PRS collects and distributes royalties arising when music by its writer and publisher members is recorded onto any format and distributed to the public, performed or played in public, broadcast or made publicly available online. http://www.prsformusic.com/Pages/default.aspx
Public Domain
Public Domain (or PD) refers to any material not ‘in copyright’ and therefore available to be exploited without the permission of any copyright holders. Under current intellectual property law, the copyright in a sound recording expires fifty years after the recording is first made commercially available, hence recordings released up to the late 1950s are currently free to be commercially exploited without the permission of the original sound copyright holder.
Publisher
Whilst publishers traditionally made their living reproducing and selling sheet music, today they invest in, promote and represent songwriters (or particular song catalogues) and are responsible for ensuring payments are made when their clients’ compositions are used commercially.
Ringback tone
This is the audible ringing heard by the caller when dialling another person’s phone. It is now possible to customise these so that the music of the phone owner’s choosing plays to the caller instead of a traditional ‘ringing’ sound.
Royalties
Royalties are fees paid to rights owners (normally record labels, publishers, writers and performers) for the use of their work.
Sampling
Sampling is the act of copying a portion of one sound recording and reusing it in a new recording. Without the appropriate clearance from the copyright holders of the original song, sampling can be held to be an infringement of copyright in the original sound recording from which the sample was taken.
Streaming
Streaming audio or video is that which is processed and watched over the internet in ‘real time’, rather than being made available to download, store and watch at another time.
Sync license
A music synchronisation license (or ‘sync’) is required to use a copyrighted piece of music in (for example) a film, game, or advert. It will usually cover a specific period of time and stipulate how the song can be used.
Term
Term can have a number of definitions but in recent months has been most used in the context of ‘term of copyright’, referring to the length of time the recording of a song is protected under current copyright law. In the UK this is currently 50 years from the time of the recording’s first release, although BPI is currently lobbying for an extension of this term.
UK Music
UK Music (previously British Music Rights) is an umbrella organisation representing the collective interests of the UK’s commercial music industry, from artists, musicians, songwriters and composers, to major and independent record labels, managers, music publishers, studio producers and collecting societies. Its many members include AIM, BPI, MMF, MU and PPL. www.ukmusic.org
Uploading
Whereas downloading is the process of actively transferring data onto a local system in a storable file, uploading is the term given to the reverse process – ie transferring/making available a digital file from your local system onto a remote one.
VPL
VPL (Video Performance Limited) is the company responsible for licensing of the use of music videos. It is now run in-house by its sister organisation PPL. www.ppluk.com/en/About-Us/Who-we-are/What-is-VPL/
Webcast
A streaming (rather than downloadable) piece of content broadcast, either pre-recorded or live, over the Internet.