The Guardian - Lindvall, H. (2009, January 29). Why Artists Should Retain Ownership of their Recordings. Retrieved November 27, 2014, from http://www.theguarudian.com/msic/musicblog/2009/jan/29/recording-copyright-ownership A main problem in modern music is the record companies' ownership of the music that their artist makes. When a artist signs a record deal they no longer own the songs that they make. This is a problem because the only way artist can retake their songs is if the record business went out of business. Artist have had meetings to try and make laws for the ownership of their songs. One law option would be after a certain amount of time the record label would no longer own the song. IMPORTANT QUOTES

What is being proposed is that all deals should be licensing deals, which means that the artists retain ultimate ownership of their recordings, and the label only has control of them for a set amount of time.

Traditionally, when an artist signs a record deal (particularly with a major label), they assign the copyright of their recordings to the label. This means they no longer own them and only have a right to royalties. In fact, the only way artists might get them back would be if the label went bust.

The "use it or lose it" approach is already becoming more common when it comes to publishing. If the publisher fails to get a song "cut" by an artist, after a certain amount of time, then instead of it gathering dust the songwriter has a chance to get it "cut".

I think with the converging world of media today and the all mighty and powerful internet artists are more capable of retaining ownership of their music. As mentioned in previous posts on my blog the internet is almost completely putting record companies out of business. This whole article is what started the controversy over ownership of music. Through the years and the development of the internet its been made possible for artists to actually retain ownership completely independent of record companies. Its articles like these that sparked the fire under the asses of musicians to seek elsewhere besides record companies that just want to use them to make money.