Slikour’s Simple Breakdown Of Master & Composer Rights: Apartment vs Estate

Mas Musiq’s new album ‘Lane Yam’ dropped last week and, to most fans’ disappointment, Samthing Soweto’s vocals were removed from the lead single ‘Amalanga Awafani’ after a heated debate about masters and publishing ensued online two weeks ago. 

Below, Slikour breaks down masters and publishing: 

“In the hopes to make this understandable for everyone, I will use real estate analogy":

1. The owner of the estate 

The master rights owner is the owner of the estate. They are the ones who pay for the installation of the electricity, plumbing, construction and everything else that the estate comes with. 

They pay for the studio, they pay for the session musicians, and they pay for everything that happens in the studio, so that gives them the right to own the master.

2. The person who owns an apartment inside the estate.

And then you could be a writer or be the guy who owns the apartment inside the estate. 

If you own an apartment, you have what they say is publishing rights and, if it’s multiple people, they all own those within the person who owns the estate i.e. master.

Publishing rights:

Publishing rights means you have the rights of the words you put on the song and you are due to get royalties on those bases because you got the publishing rights.

Master rights:

Master rights means you got control. If tomorrow any brand (eg Netflix ,Coca-Cola etc.) wants to use the music as a song , firstly the permission has to come from the master rights owner, the estate owner. 

But then, you might find they want to use a lyric from the song that was written by someone who owns the apartment in the estate. That person has the right to say, “No, you can’t use my lyrics,” because they own the publishing rights of those words. The estate owner can’t just do anything inside a tenants apartment without permission.

It’s basically like the estate owner saying, “Because I own the estate, I can come in and shoot inside your house.” You have the right to say, “No I don’t want that.” So, that’s the power publishing rights give you. 

Not knowing much about what’s happening with the Maphorisa and Samthing Soweto debacle, you might find that DJ Maphorisa owns the masters and Samthing Soweto owns the lyrics and he probably never wanted his lyrics included in the song, so it could be a conflict where the lyrics were included regardless of him denying that, if that is what the dispute was about.

And, I’m just using them as an example, it’s a thing of Maphorisa probably owning the masters/estate but Samthing Soweto has the right to the lyrics/apartment. 

Master rights simply means I’m the guy who controls everything and publishing rights inside of a master rights of a song means I can say yes or no to my lyrics being used and if they are not being used the master rights owner can remove you and recreate new lyrics without your consent, the master right owner has the right to do that.”

Hope that helps, hit me up on the comments if you need more clarity.