The Power of Ownership: The Value of Controlling Your Music Rights
The artists who thrive in this new era will be those who understand, protect, and leverage their rights.
With an industry that is dominated by just a few major labels, rights control and ownership is the ultimate power move. As an artist, your music isn’t just your art, it’s your asset, your legacy, and, increasingly, your ticket to creative freedom and financial security. Although we all know this to a degree, in an industry notorious for its complex contracts and shifting revenue models, too many artists still find themselves on the wrong side of the rights equation.
The Two Sides of the Rights Ladder: Publishing and Masters
Writing music for a living is every artist or producer’s dream, but to earn and sustain a living off of our art, we need to understand how the business actually works. Not only to explore the many different revenue and business models for our careers (you can read more about this here), but also to understand where we may be taken advantage of, what we control as artists, and, more importantly, what we are giving away.
In its simplest form, every song you create generates two primary types of rights:
Publishing Rights (Composition): These cover the underlying song or composition, any lyrics, melody, music, and structure. Traditionally, these rights belong to the songwriter but can be transferred or shared with publishers in exchange for services like administration, sync contracts, and promotion.
Master Rights (Recording): These are actual rights to any type of sound recording of a piece. Whoever owns the master controls how the recording can be distributed, used, reproduced, and licensed. In many cases, especially with traditional record deals, labels end up owning the masters, leaving artists with only a fraction of the revenue and little say over how their music is used.
As an example, Oasis wrote the song “Wonderwall” - The Gallagher Brothers own both the Publishing AND Master rights to the original song that the band released because they both wrote and recorded it themselves. The Mike Flowers Pops then came along and did a cover of the song, and for this recording The Mike Flowers Pops own the Master rights, but the Gallagher Brothers STILL own the Publishing. This means that the Gallaghers would get publishing royalties from both releases, but would only get the Master royalties from their original recording - with The Mike Flowers Pops getting the Master royalties from their recording.
Owning both sides means you control not only the creative direction but also every licensing decision, from film placements to streaming platforms even down to who is allowed to release a cover of your song. As Ditto Music puts it, “When you own your masters, you have full creative control over how your music is used, distributed, and ultimately, monetised”.
Real-World Lessons: The Cost of Losing Control
We only have to go back a couple of weeks to explore the latest headlines that are filled with cautionary tales. Taylor Swift’s well-publicized battle to reclaim her masters after her early catalog was sold without her consent forcing her to re-record her albums, setting a new industry precedent and sparking a global conversation about artist rights, ultimately concluding with her finally buying back her rights in 2025. Jay-Z, Rihanna, Zara Larsson, Dua Lipa, and countless others, have all fought to buy back their catalogs, recognizing that true power, and profit, comes from ownership.
When you as an artist don't own your rights, you lose the ability to control what happens with your art. You no longer are able to decide how your music is used, whether it’s in a political ad, a commercial, or a film. Worse still, you will often see only a very small slice of the revenue that your music generates in the future, with the rest going to labels, publishers, and intermediaries.
The Independent Advantage: Retaining Rights in the Indie Era
It’s 2025 now, and tech is moving every creative industry forward, with tools and resources that make life easier, and for independent artists, this means the stakes are even higher. With the new music world order revolving around streaming, where payouts are notoriously low and competition is fierce, keeping control of your rights can mean the difference between scraping by and building a sustainable career.
When you own your rights, you get to:
- Approve every licensing deal and set your own terms.
- Collect the full long-term value of your work, including royalties from streams, downloads, sync placements, and more.
- Build an asset that can be leveraged, sold, or passed down, on your terms.
- Decide HOW your music is used, without anyone else controlling your vision and brand.
Owning your copyrights means you, and only you, get to decide how your music is used. You are the only person with the exclusive right to reproduce, distribute, perform, and license your work. You stay in control and you get all the future value.
Layers of Rights: Ownership, Control, and Monetization
Music rights are not just categorised by what they are, but also what they can be, essentially they are a bundle of distinct privileges that can legally be separated, shared, or monetized in creative ways. Much like the distinction between publishing and masters, there are two main buckets we can drop these into, which are:
Copyrights: Legal ownership and control of the song, composition, and/or recording.
Income Rights: The right to collect royalties, fees, or other revenues generated in the future by the music (from streaming, licensing, performance, sync, etc.).
The great thing about this separation, is that you can also sell or license these different layers without impacting the other. For example, you might keep full ownership but sell a portion of your future royalties to raise funds for a new project, or license your song to a film while retaining all other rights.
This flexibility is crucial. As the team at Coda puts it:
“Keeping control of your work, this segregation of specific rights... ensures complete control of the artistic use of the works is always with the artist, and the only rights shared are to specific music IP rights that may provide future possible revenue streams for those who support and invest in the release”.
Modern Solutions: Platforms That Empower Artists
This new digital industry empowers us every day with new tools that can help us as artists, in every aspect of our music business, and that allows us to keep control whilst still going further and further into the world of career building in music. Platforms like Coda (coda.to) are leading a revolution in rights management and monetization. By enabling artists to fractionalize their music rights, and open up new forms of creative financing, through transparent, legally compliant transactions, it opens new doors for independence, all without giving up creative control.
With a growing number of models like this that helps democratize access to music investment, it empowers artists to build deeper fan relationships, and unlock new streams of creative financing, without the traditional gatekeepers.
The Bottom Line: Own Your Future
We’re all aware, the music industry ain’t perfect, it’s fraught with challenges, outdated contracts, opaque royalty systems, legacy practices, and entrenched middlemen. But the artists who thrive in this new era will be those who understand, protect, and leverage their rights.
Ownership isn’t just about money; it’s about agency, legacy, and the freedom to shape your own career.
As the industry continues to shift, the value of rights ownership will only grow. Whether you’re an emerging artist or a global superstar, the message is clear: own your rights, own your destiny.
“When artists own their music, they have the power to decide how their work is used and have a say in the artistic direction during the recording of their music.”
In 2025 and beyond, let that power be yours.
