The music business has always enjoyed a pretty cast-iron system for payment of royalties, mainly as it was so easy, once manufacturable output of recordings became possible, to rip off composers and musicians. Before wax cylinders existed, only sheet music could make a composer a living. As more and more playback systems evolved, copyright and royalty systems had to evolve alongside, usually just about keeping up, though cassette tapes were the only real revolutionary outlier. Since YouTube and other streaming platforms launched, the situation has become something of a dog's dinner, partly as most people posting or viewing just aren't aware of the situation.
I should add that visual artforms such as images, video works and CGI have suffered in comparison, in that there has traditionally been far less protection unless you were registering photos through a press agency. In 1993-4 I produced a 3D-animated fully CGI video for a record company, which was the first time anyone had attempted anything of this scale on a home production system with a small local record label, and it was released to a great fanfare at the ICA in London, and was available to buy on VHS tape. A few weeks later a certain cable-based music TV station, recently set up, began using clips from our (copyrighted) video within their own edited sequence, before and after commercials. They didn't ask permission, and when we complained, they just claimed 'fair use', as there was essentially no 'video royalty' system with which we could prosecute them with. And they were right, the cheapass scumbags. They still owe me thousands of pounds, technically. The record company are one of the biggest and best in the UK now, but they'd still never get anywhere with a claim on this, even though we had it on tape then - well, it was broadcast on their channel every fifteen minutes anyway, for over a year.
Not long before this, when the Iraq war broke out, ITN News hilariously used 808 State's 'C?bik' track as intro/outro music for their 'exciting coverage' of the start of the war. I did the EP cover artwork for that one too, but thankfully they didn't rip me off that time. The band's management phoned up ITN's lawyers and said they were going to sue them into hell if they played it one more time, and hey presto, next ad break it was gone. That's the difference of music protection. I have no idea whether they were able to claim compensation for 'musical injury', but I would have tried if I were them - it was outrageous and disgusting, but hey, that's commercialism for you.
A record company guy I knew once played me the new album by one of his bands, and we were listening to it in my flat and I suddenly sat bolt upright as one track came on. In one minute I heard
long samples from Miles Davis, Gong and Frank Zappa (and others), and laughed my head off - I asked him how he'd managed to get clearance for them. He looked somewhat baffled, so I pulled out the three albums from my collection and played him all the sections. He was white as a sheet by this point, and pulling out his (large at the time) mobile phone said he had to go. Apparently they managed to get away with it! Can't post a YouTube link obviously, but I'm listening to it on there now
So it's a fraught topic - but writing as someone who has had their visual ideas, concepts and actual output work plagiarised, duplicated and just plain stolen over decades, I do understand why it's so difficult to use musical works without paying. There
is always the option of making your own music
