The term “copyright free” seems to have become normalised in recent years by individuals who don’t understand copyright.
Copyright is the ownership of intellectual property such as music in this case. This is divided in to the composition and the performance of that composition. So this covers a band playing a cover of a well known track. They own the copyright for their performance and the artist who wrote the composition owns the composition copyright.
So why would someone say they are offering their own copyright free?
The mistakenly think this means they are offering their own intellectual property free of use. “USE” is the key word here. They think they can sell or give away the right to use their music when in fact they are saying they are selling the ownership of their music.
The difference is, if an artist gives/sells their music to another person, that person can then license it for use or also sell it on to someone else.
Really what they mean is they want to sell you the right to use their music. In more detail, they should be specifying what exact use they are licensing the music for. There are many uses for music and each has its own value that an artist will/should want to gain benefit from.
So if you see “copyright free” music, tread carefully as you may not be getting a legal agreement to use the music in the way you want and may end up getting performing rights bills coming back into your in-tray.
