The Authorship of a Musical Work and the Position of a Music Arranger (Avtorstvo glasbenega dela in položaj glasbenega aranžerja)

• Main Author: Matija Damjan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Law 2015-11-01
• Series: Zbornik Znanstvenih Razprav
• Subjects: copyright law; music; arrangement; original work; derivative work; co-authorship; combined work; duration of rights; musical composition with words.
• Online Access: http://www.pf.uni-lj.si/media/zzr_2015_damjan.pdf

The creation of the final form of a piece of popular music usually involves several people: the composer, the lyricist, the music arranger, performers, sound engineers, etc. The article explores under what conditions the contributions of these persons constitute co-authorship of a piece of music and discusses in which phase a musical work can be considered finished. The copyright status of a music arranger is discussed in particular, whose work is usually defined in theory as adaptation of existing musical works, whereas in the practice of Slovenian popular music, arrangers often act as co-authors of new original music. The last part of the article examines the rules on the duration of rights in musical works produced in co-authorship and discusses in what way the ownership and the duration of copyrights in musical works is affected by Directive 2011/77/EU, which sets out unified rules on the duration of rights in musical compositions with words.