"Make sure you own your own masters!"

[feloniuspunk]

I've noticed lately that more and more listings include the subject phrase: "Make sure you own your own master."I was just wondering, have there been some difficulties arise lately due to that? A few years ago it was extremely rare to raed anything like that buried within the text of a listing. I always assumed it was a foregone conclusion that anyone who would submit to a listing would already understand that and would not submit if they didn't already own their own masters.I guess that could be interpreted in many ways though. Is it really asking whether or not your material is copyrighted? Or is it asking if you own both the composer and publisher rights? As far as who owns the "master", if it comes into question often enough to state it in the listing, I figure there have been some issues after a submission was made and the tune got forwarded and a deal was offered only to find that the submitter did not have rights to the material.I was curious and would appreciate any light that anyone can shed on this. Maybe I'm just reading too much into it.

[clanmorgan]

Im not sure why that has been added to the listings but maybe there were people that were submitting band related material that they didnt completely where they didnt own the rights. Maybe there were a few problems from Taxi listing companies and it trickled back down into the listings.

[mojobone]

I have CDs of stuff from previous bands where I don't own or control all of the publishing, but that's not what they're talking about, here. The most common scenario where you wouldn't own rights to your master recording is if a label or other entity paid for the recording; second most common is when independent recording studios retain rights to the master recording until they are paid in full for their services. HTH