Whose song is it anyway? The grey area of music credits

While crediting collaborators and featured artists on a song is a standard practice in the music industry there are instances where an artist can release a song without crediting another artist who is also on the track. 

This week Samthing Soweto shot up trends lists after he was not credited on hit song Amalanga Awafani featuring Mas Musiq & Lawd Weezy and DJ Maphorisa upon its release. 

Though he’s since been added to the credits, the saga has raised questions about the rights of musicians and how easily they get exploited. 

TimesLIVE spoke to music publisher Karabo Motijoane of Nana Coyote Production to shed light on music credits. 

Metadata

“The biggest issue in the music industry is Metadata and people ignoring or undermining its importance,” he said. 

Motijoane explained Metadata includes a featured artist (who is known as the main artist) and featured artist (who is usually the artist named as the featured musician). There’s also non-featured artists who are usually the backing vocalists and instrumentalists, or anyone who played a role on the sound recording. 

“Metadata also includes the music composers/music melody, author or lyricists, music publisher as well as the record label (master owner). There are two parts of the music recording industry that are important to the metadata. It's who owns copyright in the composition and who owns ⁠copyright in the sound recording.

“If you are removing vocals on a song that's been recorded or released you are infringing on the copyright in the composition and you will need permission and clearance for that from all composers involved on the original song and publishers representing the composers. 

“If you don't remove the vocals you are tampering with who owns copyright in the sound recording as well as infringing the rights in copyright of the composition of the song and copyright in the sound recording.” 

Lack of contractual agreement

When recording a song, split sheets and agreements between all composers involved need to be done in the studio before the song is released.

Sampling of the song

When sampling a song one needs to understand there are two copyrights in the composition:

• copyright in the master recording that needs clearance from the master recording/sound recording owner (or whoever paid for the master); and 
• copyright in the composition in which one needs clearance from the composers and music publishers involved. 

“If you cut and paste sound recording to create a remix or a new work, you need clearance on both of the copyright rights. If you replay a melody or use lyrics of the original song for a remake or new work without tampering with the master recording/original song, you only need clearance from the composers and publishers involved from the original song.” 

Label and management decisions

“The two need a good business relationship for the benefit of the artist involved to make it easy for the artists to focus on what he/she is good at.”