My favorite octogenarian attorney recently asked me:
"Please give me a list of all the ways someone can buy a record."
I came up with the following and included uses that may not strictly constitute sales or phonorecords under the U.S. Copyright Act:
1 – Consumers can purchase permanent copies of recordings in
various configurations, such as:
a. From retailers (online like Amazon.com or brick and mortar like Target
and Walmart) or directly from an artists’ website or at a concert (e.g., together
with merchandise):
i. Vinyl Record
ii. Compact Disc
iii. DVD
iv. Embodied on video games
b. Permanent downloads from music services (e.g., from iTunes and
Amazon.com) and video game console manufacturers (e.g., Sony’s PlayStation network and
Microsoft’s Xbox store)
2 – Also, consumers pay for access to listen to recordings by subscribing
to a music service such as the following:
a. Interactive services like Spotify and Beats (where users can stream on
demand)
b. So-called "non-interactive" services like Pandora and Sirius XM (which offer users
less control over programming)
3 – Alternately, companies pay to advertise to listeners or viewers of free programming on services like
YouTube, Vevo, MTV and the services mentioned in #2 above. In this
case, access to the recording is “free” to the consumer because the advertiser
subsidizes the cost, but the consumer must watch or listen to ads in exchange
for such free access.
4 – Finally, consumers who purchase
electronics devices such as a Samsung phone or iPhone may find that music has been
bundled with the device by the hardware seller, which pays the music rights
holders for the right to do this (and thusly must build in the music cost in the device's price).
What ways to buy a record did I forget?
Please tell me what I failed to mention below!
