Course overview
From creation to circulation
This academic and professional course introduces the legal, administrative and practical tools required to protect, distribute and create value from music. Copyright is connected to publishing, collective management, digital distribution, audiovisual synchronisation and repertoire management, with particular attention to the decisions authors, composers, producers and independent artists make across streaming, social media, production music, advertising, film, television, games and AI-assisted creative environments.
Programme
Twelve units from rights to professional workflows
Conceptual frameworks are translated into verifiable procedures for catalogues, releases and audiovisual projects. The final laboratory applies the course to metadata, split sheets, sync packages and real professional scenarios.
Copyright, related rights and the value chain
Author, work, originality, moral and economic rights, co-authorship and derivative works; performers, phonogram producers, publishers, recordings and master recordings.
Collective management, identifiers and metadata
Rights administration, royalty distribution, national and international collecting networks, ISRC and ISWC identifiers, essential data and the errors that can lead to lost revenue.
Publishing, distribution and streaming
Publishing agreements, split sheets, shares, catalogue administration, aggregators, delivery workflows, credits, platform metadata and digital monetisation.
Sync, screen media and social platforms
Sync and master-use licences, production music, pitching and music supervision, followed by UGC, short-form content, Content ID, claims, whitelisting and repertoire protection.
Music markets, contracts and negotiation
Streaming, sync, commissions, direct licensing and catalogue positioning; exclusivity, term, territory, royalties, accounting, permissions and essential contractual clauses.
Music AI and practical laboratory
Authorship, model training, stylistic imitation, voice cloning, transparency and platform accountability, followed by release, metadata, split-sheet and sync-package simulations.
Who can take part
- Students of composition, electronic music, voice, production, music for media and music technology.
- Authors, performers, producers and independent professionals who want to organise their repertoire, rights, credits and data.
- No previous legal training is required; the course is educational and does not replace specialist legal or tax advice.
What to bring
- A laptop or tablet for document analysis and practical exercises.
- One original track or project whose authorship, credits and release data can be mapped during the laboratory.
- Any available metadata, split sheet, distribution record or sync brief connected to that project.
- A notebook or digital document for building a personal rights and release checklist.
- Distinguish a musical work, recording, master, publication and performance.
- Organise identifiers, metadata and credits while reducing attribution and accounting errors.
- Prepare a release and navigate publishing, distribution, sync and social media.
- Read essential contractual clauses and recognise when specialist advice is required.
- Build split sheets, metadata records and sync packages for practical scenarios.
- Evaluate music AI through data provenance, consent, transparency and responsibility.