Copyright — ownership of songs and albums as creative works — is a riotous knot of rules and processes in the music industrywith the players much more numerous and entangled than the ordinary fan might think. For music listeners, a song is a song is a song. But for the music business, every individual song is split into two separate copyrights: composition lyrics, melody and sound recording literally, the audio recording of the song. Sound recording copyrights are owned by recording artists and their record labels. Those parties may have nothing to do with the people who write the lyrics and melody of the song and thus own mone composition copyright. For the majority of times when somebody listens to a pet, both types of copyright kick in, generating two sets of royalties that are paid to the respective parties. Sometimes labels work with agents that can license bigger catalogs all at once, saving time and trouble but wedging in an extra fee. The specific percentage payouts within thes...