DATE: MAY 1, 2014
WIXEN MUSIC PUBLISHING, INC.
INTRODUCES A TERMINATION AND REVERSION CALCULATOR
TO ITS WEBSITE,
ENABLING EASY RESEARCH OF COPYRIGHT REVERSIONS AND TERMINATIONS
WIXEN MUSIC PUBLISHING, INC. has announced a user-friendly new feature–a copyright termination and reversion calculator–to its website that will enable anyone to easily research copyright reversions and terminations. The company’s founder Randall Wixen, one of the most respected names in the music industry and author of the widely praised book THE PLAIN AND SIMPLE GUIDE TO MUSIC PUBLISHING (Hal Leonard) says, “This is one of the most complex and difficult areas of copyright that requires many intricate and detailed factors to be kept in mind. The calculator was the brain child and subsequent product of our VP of Copyright and Licensing, Jason Rys.”
To view the termination and reversion calculator, go to www.wixenmusic.com and click on © Reversions and pick Termination & Reversion Calculator from the sub-menu.
As Rys explains: “Unfortunately, due to the number of variables involved and the complexity of domestic and foreign copyright laws, songwriters and their heirs sometimes struggle to understand what termination and reversionary rights they are entitled to. In many cases, failure to exercise these rights during a certain time period causes them to be forfeited for good. The termination and reversion calculator aims to simplify and take the guesswork out of determining what termination and reversion rights are available. You simply answer a few questions about the song, the songwriters, and the grant of rights in question and the calculator returns the termination and reversionary rights available to your particular situation. We tried to make it as user-friendly as possible and present the information in plain English with examples so you don’t have to be a lawyer to understand it. There is a helpful FAQ page for some of the more complicated concepts and terms.”
Rys elaborates: “For example, say you wrote a song in 1985 and sell it to a music publisher the same year. If you were to enter this info into the calculator, it would tell you that you can terminate that sale to the music publisher (even though you may have agreed to sell it to them for the full duration of copyright protection) and regain ownership of your copyright in the United States as early as 2020 but that in order to do so, you would need to send a formal termination notice to your music publisher between 2010 and 2018.”
With an office in Los Angeles and a sister company, Wixen Music UK Ltd. in London, the companies administer the song catalogs of many top artists from the last 50 years, ranging from George Harrison, the Doors, Neil Young and Tom Petty, to the Black Keys, Andrew Bird and Fitz & The Tantrums. Randall Wixen has just issued the third edition of THE PLAIN AND SIMPLE GUIDE TO MUSIC PUBLISHING. With aforewordby Tom Petty,it containsan array of new topics pegged to the ever-changing music industry landscape. The new subjects include: the value of music (how and why streaming yields so little income to content creators), monetizing YouTube, and the difficulty of calculating and verifying new statutory streaming rates. The book is available at all major chains, including Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/l69d575.
###
