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work made for hire if you're a producer a session musician an artist or an engineer living or working in the united states you may have heard of or perhaps even signed a document that said the words work made for hire somewhere within it you may have seen it in a contract you signed or you may have just heard that term being thrown around before but what does the term work made for hire actually mean and how does it affect your rights as a creator [Music] welcome to music business money my name's charlie foster anderson and today i'm going to explain what a work made for hire is a work made for hire is a term used in pretty much every record deal producer agreement session musician contract and i would say probably 90 of contracts in the history of the recorded music industry either have the term work made for hire in it or something of similar effect written into them and if you're outside of the us there's probably a very similar concept written into your copyright laws and music contracts but it might not be exactly called a work made for hire so what exactly is a work made for hire whenever you create something of an original nature maybe you've written a piece of music and recorded it or maybe you've written a book maybe you've written a joke a lyric a poem a melody or maybe you've filmed and edited a music video or a mini documentary about your band whatever it is you've created that thing is typically protected by copyright laws that enable you and only you to control profit off of and exploit that particular thing copyright law is intended to protect your original creations from being stolen and exploited by others who didn't or couldn't think of or were unable to create that particular thing the main reason they exist is to help create an economy around artistic endeavors like art music or even just technological inventions generally but copyright laws are also there to make sure that people keep coming up with original ideas and making thought-provoking boundary content if no one was protected by copyright laws people might not have that much incentive to create anything original and we might live in a world that doesn't thrive on culture and experimental ideas without copyright laws we'd probably have stopped developing certain technologies long ago and there certainly wouldn't be that 10th kanye album dropping real soon anyway typically copyright protections are built into your creation of that something in that copyright law protects your creation from the very point in time is put into a fixed and tangible form for a piece of music just imagining the music in your mind isn't quite enough to protect it but from the moment it is written down on a piece of paper or the moment you recorded it into that microphone and onto your computer's hard drive that is when the copyright law kicks in and starts protecting your creation and at that point it immediately becomes the property of the author who created it of course you can increase the strength of your copyright and gain additional legal protections by doing things like registering your songs with the copyright office but technically if you've created something original and put it into a concrete medium it's already somewhat protected by copyright law now i'll be making another video on registering your songs with the copyright office so make sure you hit subscribe and the notification bell button to see that video as soon as it goes live now a work made for hire is pretty much the same thing as my explanation of copyright creation just before except that when you create something under a work made for hire arrangement that copyright protection that you automatically garner as soon as you fix your creation into a concrete thing actually goes straight through you past you and it goes to the person who's hired you to create that particular thing put super simply the employer or commissioning party is deemed to be the author of that work and they'll own the copyright as though they were the true author this situation usually happens under employer employee relationship or it can be a deal where somebody has commissioned you to create a work it's like there's a boss above you telling you to create something for their intended use or benefit and you then go and create that thing for the sole purpose of giving your creation to them once you've finished making it if you're the original author or creator of something in a deal like this you might be in a work for hire relationship and you don't own anything and if you're the one hiring the person to contribute to your project then you'll be the person who retains all of that copyright ownership in the finished product and you'll be the legal author of that work a work for hire arrangement can be an incredibly powerful tool to protect your copyrights as a creator when you're involving other people to help you out one of the best examples that i can think of to help explain this in a practical way is if you were the writer for a newspaper let's say you're a writer for the new york times if you're an employee at the new york times and your scope of work is to write articles for publication within the new york times newspaper then the articles that you write during your employment are probably going to be considered works made for hire and the new york times will own the copyright for those articles not you even though you're technically the original individual author of that article and you might even be credited as such or another example might be that you're a game animator and designer you've trained for years as an expert animator and now you've been hired by rockstar games to help animate and develop the next grand theft auto 6. chances are in your employment contract with them it's going to state that although you're helping them create characters draw and design made up buildings sets and literal 3d fake worlds within the game rockstar is the owner of all copyrights under the gta brand and you don't get to claim ownership of anything you do for them as an employee slash creator under their umbrella it makes sense though right if i had created gta and was the only game developer there but then i realized that i needed help from other game developers if i was ever going to get this thing off the ground and release my first game or do anything substantial with the gta brand i would want to be protected by work made for higher copyrights to ensure i wasn't dissolving my copyrights amongst every employee who'd ever come through my business until i ended up with almost nothing and same goes for the new york times imagine how small they'd still be if they didn't have the ability to copyright all of their writers articles under one big new york times umbrella where they can sell ad space as a corporation and continue building the brand through multiple generations and nations it really wouldn't be possible if the copyrights in those articles were owned by each individual writer of course the new york times is also protected by other things like trademarks and other types of copyrights but that's for a whole other video so in the realm of music how does a work made for hire affect you well first of all it helps you protect your copyright by ensuring that if you've created a piece of music and you need to employ other musicians to actually perform it you still get to keep your copyrights as the original writer creator commissioner or author of the piece if you've written a song but all you can do is sing how you're going to make an actual recording of that song and then release it are you going to spend the next 10 years learning how to play the drums bass guitar piano violin cello electric guitar tambourine and triangle then go and study audio engineering mixing and mastering so that at the end of the day you can just do everything on your own and not have to hire anyone else because then your copyrights will be diluted and it'll now be 20 people on the song instead of it just being your song probably not but if you've commissioned all of those people to contribute to your song and its production and the common understanding is that all of those people involved are providing their services as a work made for higher type of arrangement then you've just saved yourself 10 years and you'll still get to keep all of the copyright another great example is when a company like mcdonald's goes and hires musicians and a band or producer to produce a jingle for an ad campaign mcdonald's obviously wants to retain the copyrights in their jingle creations so that they can produce 40 different versions of [Music] and still retain the ownership to the song melody instrumentation and lyrical content so they will employ people on a work for higher basis and any musician involved in creating that little jingle will probably just be paid a one-time flat fee and makers will still retain 100 of their copyrights in the jingle the sounds the lyrics all of it what just upfront no publishing just up front about a half a man i want artists to know that part keep it publishing man i'm loving it been running for how long now in another context a record deal typically has language in it that specifies that you acknowledge and agree that for each of the albums that you make under your record deal that record label is engaging your personal services as a work made for hire specifically ordered or commissioned by that record label as a collective work or other compilation and in exchange for your copyrights under this work for hire agreement the record label might give you an advance and then a royalty if the record label ever starts making a profit on your commissioned work in a sense the record label is creating a body of work with multiple artists and albums and songs across a wide range of genres much like the new york times employs hundreds of writers to write about all different topics from world news to entertainment to the best places to eat in the east village this summer so that's really what a workmate for hire is you're providing your specific skills and services which would otherwise be individually copyrightable but you're choosing to waive those rights and essentially sell them to someone with a larger or more collective purpose or on the other hand if you're the creator you're employing people in a sense to work towards the common goal of them helping you finish your creation and at the end of the day you know you'll still retain 100 of your copyrights and the work will remain valuable to you work for hire agreements are an essential component to how the music industry works it also solidifies how music in and of itself retains value and is handed around sold or simply kept by the original creator who wishes to collaborate with others who have different skill sets to theirs hopefully all of these examples can help solidify how the exchange of copyright works when it's being handed over from the individual original creator to someone who may have a bigger picture idea or a collective experience in mind that uses those individual copyrights in a more cohesive or potentially powerful way the person collecting the copyrights of multiple contributors might also have more expertise or skill in monetizing those copyrights or doing something with that content that as an individual creator you may not have the ability or time to pull off on your own to the untrained eye it can sound like a big rip-off but remember that the individual creator should always make sure that they're being adequately compensated for the handing over of those copyrights whether it be through a wage or simply via a one-time fee for their contribution to a certain work it's up to you as the creator to get a lawyer and understand for yourself what you're handing over what you're potentially losing and whether the compensation that you're receiving is adequate for your time energy and skills spent in creating that piece of art or content one caveat that i'd like to mention before we wrap up is that work made for hire agreements are completely different to assignments exclusive licenses and non-exclusive licenses and i'll be going through those type of agreements and arrangements in later videos i hope you found this video helpful make sure to hit subscribe and the notification bell to stay up to date with my latest videos and as usual feel free to comment below with any additional questions or topic suggestions that you'd like me to make videos on also feel free to add me over on instagram links in the description below thank you so much for watching until next time oh and in case i don't see you good afternoon good evening and good night [Music] [Applause]