Knowledge of music copyrighting pros and cons should come easily to me for several reasons. The first reason is because I went to school to learn all about music production and the music business. Secondly, my husband is a professional musician and has been for as long as I have known him. Though he does not make a lot of money from his playing, there are certainly times when the extra money adds up quickly. He has been in a variety of bands, and I have learned a lot about what is right in what is wrong.
One of the first things I learned a bout music copyright was something that I already knew. Just like any other creative endeavor, a song, or even a melody, is under copyright the moment it is created. There are legal steps you should take however, to ensure that your music copyright is upheld. Even though you may have a copyright on your material, there are still many ways people can steal your music from you. Those who freely share music online without the artist benefiting from it are in breach of almost every music copyright law there is.
Perhaps the problem began with how people think about music. They can hear the songs on the radio for free, so they just assume that the music is free. If you worked in a factory and created machines, cars, or any other type of gadget, you are creating something in the same way a musician creates music. The company you work for would not go out on the street and give away everything you have made for free, and a musician would not want to do the same thing either. When you go to a concert you pay an admission price, and when you buy an album you are buying the songs on the album.
Music copyrighting means that the artist is protected. No one can reproduce and give away or sell their music without their permission. Fans don’t realize that when a copy a CD, or share music files online, they are breaking the law. Music copyright protects them and says that if there is a profit to be made they are the only ones that should be making it. It also means that if you make an illegal copy of any song or album you are depriving that musician of a sale. The next time you copy a CD, think about music copyright and remember that even know you may not get caught, you are not doing your favor artist any favors.
If you look on the Internet or go into your nearby audio store you’re likely to find music labeled “Healing Music.” The section may include music for relaxation, meditation, stress reduction, pain relief or tapping into one’s soul. There may be a variety of instruments or sounds from a forest or the ocean.
So what makes this music “healing music?”
Music has a way of stirring our innermost feelings and all of our senses, of tapping into parts of ourselves unlike anything else. Music is a universal language that has the ability to speak to us deeply and uniquely.
If you’ve paid much attention to how you respond to a variety of music, you may have noticed that some music seems to energize you, some music can move you to tears or spark a special memory of a time, place, food, or perhaps a certain person. Some music seems to make you relax, feel less stressed, and feel happier. And some music fills us with deep spiritual attunement.
The following are some examples of what I mean.
- Tapping into our innermost feelings:
Think about some of the movies you’ve seen. “Jaws” wouldn’t be the same without its daunting, low, repetitive sounds that makes you sit on the edge of your seat waiting for the shark to attack from somewhere. Then there’s “Titanic” and its gorgeous love theme that permeates throughout the movie and throughout ourselves with its bitter sweetness, generating the beauty of love and the tragedy of the massive ship’s sinking and loss of so many lives.
One aspect of “healing” music is to stir our feelings, to help us deal with grief, sadness, anger or other feelings. By allowing ourselves to FEEL those feelings, the intensity will eventually lessen and even dissipate, resulting in being healing for us. When we avoid our feelings (consciously or subconsciously) they nonetheless tend to build up inside. They don’t just go away. Music can be a tool to help us deal with feelings within us, whether we’re aware of them or not. This is one of the wonderful ways music can be incredibly healing.
- Music for an energy boost:
I recall the late 1970′s when I did housework to the Doobie Brothers’ latest album, “Minute by Minute.” It would help keep me energized and cheerful while I did the laundry, dusted and straightened (not my favorite things in the world to do). Remembering that, I recently bought the CD and I find that it still works to energize me. Handel’s Messiah is also a very energizing piece, or the last movement to Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, the famous Ode to Joy.
In The Mozart Effect, Don Campbell talks about using music in a variety of ways throughout the day, in the morning to help energize us, throughout the day to help us focus or concentrate better, music to help our intelligence, and in the evening to help us relax.
- Music for relaxation:
Sometimes I have trouble falling asleep, so I listen to relaxing music, which can be a tremendous help. Lately I’ve been listening to some wonderful Native American flute music by Scott Cunningham to help me go to sleep as well as recently during some very busy days to help me not feel so stressed out. I’ve also drifted off to sleep listening to a guided meditation by Ron Mann, Ph.D., Sleep.
What exactly is “relaxing” music? Whether we are aware of it or not, music that’s relaxing tends to slow down our heart rates to about one beat per second. If we’re feeling stressful, angry, anxious, or irritable, our heart rates tend to increase. Music can actually help our heart rates slow down to a more relaxing pace, changing our physiology. This phenomenon is what can help me fall asleep more easily. It’s what is found with many meditation tapes or other music specifically designed for stress reduction or relaxation.
- Music for spiritual attunement:
Chanting has existed for centuries. For example, there are wonderful recordings of Gregorian chants, chants from India, chants sung by Catholic or Buddhist monks and other religious or secular groups. They tend to be repetitive with the goal of deepening our spiritual lives, whatever they may be, or at the very least, to help bring peaceful feelings into our beings.
There is a large variety of music that taps into our souls. For example, I am almost finished recording music that I’ve written for a new CD (or audio tape), Journey Within. It has been a truly inspirational journey, one that has been incredibly healing. It was all written from my soul, and those qualities are heard throughout every piece.
- Choosing Music
How do we know what music to choose to be healing for us? What about the variety of musical tastes that we each have? I have some suggestions on my Bibliography page to help get you started. There are also several books listed there, such as Hal Lingerman’s, The Healing Energies of Music, which lists music categorically, a tremendously helpful resource.
If you don’t already, I encourage you to pay attention to your responses to a variety of music – physically, mentally, spiritually. To refer to when you need it, jot down the music that helps you in different ways, such as some of the examples I’ve mentioned above. That can be a valuable tool to use when you need it.
We use a Macintosh computer for music sharing. The application we have come to rely on is called Acquisition. It’s a great, user-friendly music sharing program exclusive to the Macintosh platform. It allows you to download and upload concurrently, and provides helpful ratings to ensure that you are sharing with a reliable peer.
Acquisition is highly compatible with ITunes. We have been able to organize and play hours of music for parties by collaborating between Acquisition and ITunes. The combined technology of these two programs is incredible and so easy to use, that even our kids have learned how to search and locate music of their choice.
If we are trying to locate a particularly elusive music file, we also have come to depend on a bit torrent client called Azureus. Azureus is more than a music sharing program however; you can share all sorts of files. However, while Azureus can often allow us to access more obscure titles, Acquisition is still our first choice as a music sharing program due to its ease of use, quicker upload and download times and minimal steps required to acquire music files.
One of the best things about Acquisition is that it can be used free of charge got an extended period of time. You do have to tolerate occasional pesky nag messages, however, this does little to interfere with the overall process, and is a small annoyance when you consider how great a program Acquisition really is.
The other great thing is that almost all files have been pre-verified. That means that most times you will be able to acquire the actual title you have selected. Nasty surprises are very rare. Also, the benefit of working on a Macintosh computer is that the chances of getting an infected file are much lower, since most viruses are created to attack PC computers. Since macs aren’t as mainstream, they aren’t as plagued with viruses. Just another benefit that we’ve found with use.
In the past, we have tried a few other music sharing programs including Napster, Limewire and Kazaa, however since switching our file sharing usage to our Macintosh we have come to rely on Acquisition, as well as, Azureus from time to time. We’ve found that in order to maximize our download times and access to files, the best thing to do is to enable or allow file sharing amongst peers. Of course, this is not an absolute requirement, but you may be viewed as a ‘freeloader’ if you only take from other users, but never allow sharing of your files with others.
Another thing to keep in mind, depending on where you live, is that sharing of music files is a grey area. Meaning that there is a lot of controversy over where to draw the line when it comes to copyright infringements. If you want to err on the side of caution, your best bet is to only download music files that you actually own the rights to – in other words, you need to own the album. The only purpose this serves is to give you an MP3 version of a song, rather than only a CD version. Whether this holds value to you or not, is up to you to decide.