What are printed musical works (scores)?
A musical work is a work consisting of music (that is, musical scores or sheet music), but not including any sound recordings or words intended to be spoken or sung with the music.
The owners of copyright in musical works have the exclusive right to copy, adapt, and perform the musical work in public.
Under the Copyright Act,
- one copy of a musical work may be made by or on behalf of a person giving a lesson for instructional purposes
- part of a musical work may be copied by a teacher or student for research or private study
- multiple copies of 3% or 3 pages of a musical work may be made by or on behalf of an educational establishment for educational purposes.
Remember that you may not be able to place one complete copy of a work on a school intranet. This may amount to authorising multiple copies of the work and would not be covered by the exceptions or permissions that allow only one copy of a work to be made, or multiple copies of only part of a work to be made.
The Copyright Act does not allow you to make an adaptation of a musical work without the owner's permission. In relation to a musical work, an adaptation means an arrangement or transcription of the musical work.
The Copyright Act does not allow you to change the musical work without the owner's permission.
Copying
Copying a musical work for the purpose of research or private study
This exception allows fair dealing with a musical work for a person's own research or private study. When considering whether a particular instance of copying amounts to fair dealing for the purpose of research or private study, the following considerations must be taken into account:
- the purpose of the copying
- the nature of the work copied
- whether the work could have been obtained within a reasonable time at an ordinary commercial price
- the effect of the copying on the potential market for, or value of, the work
- the amount and substantiality of the part of the work copied in relation to the whole work.
This exception does not permit the making of multiple copies of a work (that is, more than one copy of the same work or part of the work on the same occasion). Accordingly, you cannot direct your students to each make a copy of the same material, as that is equivalent to authorising the making of multiple copies.
Copying a whole musical work for instructional purposes
This exception allows a person giving a lesson to make one copy of a musical work in the course of preparation for instruction, for use in the course of instruction, or in the course of instruction. This means that you can make a slide that can be projected on to a screen for the whole class to view, but you cannot place a copy on the intranet as this amounts to authorising the making of multiple copies.
Making multiple copies of part of a musical work for educational purposes
This exception allows a copy of a part of a musical work (up to 3% or 3 pages of work, provided that no more than 50% of the work is copied) to be made by or on behalf of an educational establishment for educational purposes. The work you copy from must not be copied again at your school for 14 days under this exception.
Copying musical works for examination purposes
This exception allows you to make copies of musical works for examination purposes. There are no restrictions on the use of copyright material to set and answer examination questions. This exception does not extend to the storage of examination papers in library databases for future reference and study by students.
Copying the typographical arrangement of a score
A typographical work means the typographical arrangement of a published edition, being the layout of words and associated elements on a page of published works (such as books containing musical works or scores). Publishers of musical works own copyright in the typographical arrangement (page layout design) of the edition for 25 years after the edition is published. (Note this applies to the date of the edition, not just to the original publication date.)
So even if the copyright in the musical work has expired (the composer may have died more than 50 years ago), if the published edition is less than 25 years old, you still have to get permission from the publisher to photocopy or otherwise reproduce the pages of the published edition (unless you are copying under the exceptions described above or a copyright licence).
The publisher's copyright protects the typeset or image of a work on a page and exists independently of any copyright in the underlying work. It therefore only extends to protection against making facsimile copies of the arrangement, not the underlying work. The underlying works are likely to be protected by separate copyright and should not be copied in isolation (for instance, cut and paste and printed) without permission from the owner of copyright in the underlying work.
Licences
If your school has one of the music licences offered by APRA, you and your students are permitted to do more copying, performing, and recording. To find out about these licences, click on the following links:
