Mechanical Royalties

The term mechanical royalties refered to payments for devices to mechanically reproduce sound. Even though device’s have not reproduced sound mechanically for the last 70 years, the name is still used for payments made to copyright owners for manufacture and distribution of CDs. These days websites have to pay download licenses to copyright owners as well via PRS.

The concept of compulsory license for mechanical rights was brought out to prevent copyright owners from having ultimate control on the work that they facilitated. So, once a work has been recorded, the publisher is required to license it to anyone else who wants to use it for various purposes and to pay the fee accordingly.

Basically once a song has been recorded, a copyright owner must license it to anyone else that wants to use it in a recorded CD. The user will only get a compulsory license if, the song is a non dramatic musical work, has been previously recorded, the previous recording has been distributed and in the public domain.

A dramatic musical work is a song used in an opera or broadway. The compulsory license is only for the US.

For the UK, there is no compulsory license and there is no fixed rate, the rates are open to negotiations between the BPI and MCPS/PRS