When setting up a release, what do the various rights fields refer to? And how are they displayed online? In this article we will look at which rightsholders should be listed on your release, and how they will be displayed online. In general, we are referring here to the the C- and P-Lines for your release, which are identified by the symbols © and Ⓟ.

Rights fields when setting up a Release:

When setting up a new release, you are required to fill in these two fields which relate to the ownership of your release and your recording:

Copyright Owner:

The information to be entered in the 'Copyright owner' field refers to the owner of the release. This information will be displayed on the streaming platforms as the C-Line (©).

The owner of the release can often be separate from the owner of the recording. For example, if an artist licenses their recording to a label, the label will own the release but the artist would still own the recording.

Note: Even though it is not unusual for the names in the ‘Copyright owner’ and ‘Recording Rights owner’ fields to be different, for DIY artists they are usually the same

Recording Rights Owner:

The information to be entered in the 'Recording Rights owner' field refers to the owner of the sound recording i.e. the person or group of people who have to give permission for the recording to be part of the release. This information is displayed as P-Line (Ⓟ) on the streaming services.

Note: The owner of the recording is not the same as the owner of the composition. For example, when recording a cover version, the artist who is creating the recording will own the recording rights, but the original songwriter will still own the composition rights.

Rights fields when setting up a Track

So far, we have been looking at what information to enter when you are setting up a release. But if you are setting a up a track, which is not yet part of release (which you can do in your 'Tracks' section), you are only required to enter the name of the Recording Rights owner:

Making sure the correct year is associated with Copyright and Recording Rights

The year attached to the both Copyright and Recording Rights is, by default, the year that the release is published. So, if your release or recording has already been published – either online or as a physical product - please make sure to select the option that your track has been previously released.

In the release setup:

or in the track setup:

How the information is displayed on the Streaming Platforms

The various streaming platforms display rights information differently, but here you can see how it is displayed on Spotify:

and on Apple Music:

We hope that this article provides a clear explanation of the rights fields that you will need to complete when setting up either a release or a track. If you have any more questions about the topic, or anything else related to MusicHub, feel free to contact our Customer Support team.