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Music in corporate video: which copyright did you actually buy

September 2026 · Compliance · Quebec City

A piece of recorded music carries more than one copyright. There is the underlying musical work, the composition, and there is the recording of it. Those are two separate layers, and they can belong to two different people. Clearing one does not clear the other. That is why a company acting in good faith, that paid, that has an invoice and sleeps well, still ends up with a soundtrack that does not cover the use it is putting the film to.

This page publishes no licence price and describes no music supplier's catalogue. It describes what Canada's Copyright Act reserves to the rights holder, and what a licence has to state to be worth anything. The goal is that you can read the document you are handed and know which answer should end the conversation with a producer.

What a copyright actually gives its holder

Section 3(1) of the Act does not describe a single right. It describes a bundle of reserved acts: producing or reproducing the work, in whole or in any substantial part, in any material form, and performing or publishing the work in public. The paragraphs that follow reach sound recordings, cinematographic works and communication to the public by telecommunication.

Translated for a manufacturer: marrying a soundtrack to your footage is a reproduction. Putting the video online is a communication to the public by telecommunication. Those are two different acts in the statute. Permission covering one does not automatically cover the other.

Section 13(1) then sets the starting rule, and it regularly surprises the buyer who paid the invoice: the author of a work is the first owner of the copyright in that work. Not the person who commissioned it.

« l'auteur d'une oeuvre est le premier titulaire du droit d'auteur sur cette oeuvre » Copyright Act, s. 13(1), French consolidation, Justice Laws

On duration, section 6 provides that copyright lasts for the life of the author and then until the end of the seventieth year after the year of the author's death. Your campaign runs for a quarter. The rights in that soundtrack will outlive everyone around the table.

One track, two rights, and this is where it is decided

The Act treats the song and the recording of the song separately. Section 15 gives the performer a copyright that includes the exclusive right to fix the performance. Section 18 gives the maker of a sound recording a copyright that includes an exclusive right of its own. Section 19 provides that the performer and the maker are each entitled to equitable remuneration for the public performance of the recording or its communication to the public by telecommunication.

The same Act defines a sound recording as a recording made up of sounds, whether or not they come from the performance of a work, fixed on any material medium, and defines the maker as the person who carries out the operations necessary for that first fixation of sounds. The composition and the master are two legal objects, with two possible owners.

The real-world case keeps repeating. A manufacturer south of Quebec City has a local musician re-record a well known piece for its trade-show video. It has an agreement with the musician, so it is covered on the recording side. It has nothing on the composition side. The mirror image happens too: a company gets the composer's blessing, then uses the commercial release it found online, and holds nothing on the recording side. In both cases the invoice exists, the feeling of having paid exists, and half the file is empty.

What a licence has to say to be worth anything

Section 13(4) is the spine of the whole question. An assignment or a grant of an interest in copyright is only valid if it is in writing and signed by the owner of the right.

« la cession ou la concession n'est valable que si elle est rédigée par écrit et signée par le titulaire du droit qui en fait l'objet » Copyright Act, s. 13(4), French consolidation, Justice Laws

The same subsection lets the owner grant any interest in the right by licence, and lets that licence be limited by territory, by medium, by market and by scope. Two things follow.

First: a verbal yes on the phone, or a line in an email thread, is not a licence. Second, less obvious and more useful: a limited licence is not a vendor's trick, it is the normal shape of a licence. The Act expressly allows it to be carved up. And a document that says nothing about territory, medium, market and scope does not thereby cover you more broadly. It just leaves you without an answer.

What you put to the producer, in writing, before signing, fits in seven lines.

One answer should end the conversation: "it's royalty free, don't worry about it." That is not an answer, it is a phrase. The right answer is a document you can read, and hand to someone else to read.

The booth screen is not your product page

The collective societies split these rights the same way. SOCAN describes dealing with a team specialised in performing rights, reproduction rights and synchronisation rights, three distinct services. On audiovisual post-synchronisation, it states that those rights are paid by the broadcaster, « contrairement aux licences de synchronisation qui sont payées par les producteurs ou les superviseurs musicaux », meaning synchronisation licences are paid by producers or music supervisors. Synchronisation is a separate transaction, and it belongs to the production budget.

On the recording side, Ré:Sonne, which collects for performers and record makers, states on its site that every business must legally pay a licence fee to broadcast music or to play recorded music in public.

The consequence is concrete for an industrial SME. The video embedded on your product page and the same video looping on a booth screen through four days of a trade show are not the same exposure. That second use is the one companies systematically forget to mention when they order the film, and it is the one that is most visible.

Why it is the most expensive fix in the edit

Replacing a soundtrack is not replacing a file. An edit is cut to the music. Transitions land on the downbeats, shot lengths follow the musical phrase, the moment the message turns arrives with a chord change, and the film ends when the piece ends. Change the piece, so change the tempo, and nothing lands where it should any more. You do not swap, you re-cut.

That is a production argument, not a legal opinion. On a two-minute plant video later cut down into six vertical extracts, one track to replace means seven edits to redo, subtitles to re-time, ads to re-upload and a pause in distribution. The cost of badly covered music is not measured by the price of the licence, it is measured by the price of the re-edit. And it always lands at the worst moment, once the media is already bought. It is the same mechanism as the other variables described in corporate video pricing.

Your studio's licence does not cover other people's music

A content licence handed over by a studio covers what the studio produced. In the Signal programme, the terms are published: a lifetime content licence with no time limit, and the client owns the ad accounts. The film shot for you stays yours. That does not mean a third-party element inside the film, music first among them, carries the same duration.

A film is usable only for as long as its shortest component licence. So the question to put to any producer is not only "how long is my licence", it is "what is the shortest term among every element in the film". Both answers belong in the same document, and you should be able to re-read them two years later without phoning anyone.

When this question does not arise at all

Plenty of industrial films need no music licence, because they have no music. A voice, some room tone and the real sound of the machines are enough. A press closing, an overhead crane travelling, a welding bead: those sounds belong to your plant and they say something true about it. For a filmed plant tour or a client testimonial, that is often the stronger creative choice, not a budget compromise.

Music added by reflex is a good part of the reason corporate videos all sound alike. If the track does nothing the real sound would not do better, it buys you a rights problem and nothing else. The full production logic, from framing a shoot to putting it into campaign, is on the video and content production page.

This page describes public rules. It is not legal advice. Have your own counsel confirm your situation before you publish.

Sources

If you have a video in production right now, book the call and we will go through what your agreement says about the soundtrack before you sign it.

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