How long the copyrights last
The two copyrights age differently. The composition runs for the life of the last surviving co-writer plus 70 years in the UK and most major markets. The sound recording runs 70 years from release in the UK and EU. After expiry, works enter the public domain and the income stops with the monopoly.
For valuation, term is the quiet variable: a catalogue of 1960s recordings has a visible horizon in a way a 2020s songwriting catalogue does not, and estate planning for writers is planning across generations of income.
Contractual reversion: the term you negotiated
The cleanest route home is the one written into the deal. Licence deals end and rights revert at term; modern assignments increasingly carry reversion after a fixed period or on triggers: end of active exploitation, failure to release, or the label deleting the catalogue.
Reading old deals for reversion triggers is genuinely profitable work. Catalogues contain forgotten clauses: rights that reverted years ago and were never claimed, options never exercised that terminated control, unreleased albums whose rights lapsed back. A rights audit against the actual contract text belongs in every catalogue review.
Statutory routes: the law forcing the issue
Statutes add reversion the contract never granted. The loudest is the US termination right: authors can terminate transfers of US rights after a statutory period (broadly 35 years for post-1977 grants), reclaiming the US slice of their catalogue regardless of what the deal said, subject to procedural windows and the work-for-hire exception that excludes employment-created works.
The UK has no general equivalent for modern grants, which makes the US right strategically important for UK writers with American income: terminating the US share alone materially changes the economics of an old deal and the balance of power in any renegotiation. The procedural rules are strict and the windows close; this is specialist-counsel territory flagged early, not late.
Re-recording: rebuilding value instead of reclaiming it
When neither contract nor statute helps, an artist who owns their songs can re-record them once contractual re-recording restrictions expire, creating new masters they own outright and steering licensing and fan attention to them. The strategy is old; recent high-profile re-recordings demonstrated it at catalogue scale, and labels responded by drafting longer re-recording restrictions into new deals.
For advisers the lesson runs both ways: on old deals, check when restrictions lapse and what a re-record could be worth; on new deals, resist restriction terms that outlast the label's own active interest in the catalogue.
- Diligence note: reversion and termination rights travel with catalogues. A buyer paying for decades of income needs to price the years a writer can reclaim.
- Registrations must follow reversions: rights that came home but are still registered to the old owner keep paying the old owner.
Figures referred to
- UK copyright termsIllustrative
- Composition: life of the last surviving author plus 70 years. Sound recording: 70 years from releaseUK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act as amended · as of 2025
- US termination windowIllustrative
- Broadly 35 years after the grant for post-1977 transfers, within strict procedural windowsUS Copyright Act §203 · as of 2025
Figures marked Illustrative show the shape of the market, not a quoted rate. The lessons keep the maintained, sourced numbers.
Common questions
How long does music copyright last in the UK?
The song lasts for the life of the last surviving writer plus 70 years; the recording lasts 70 years from release. The two expire on different clocks, so a recording can enter the public domain while its song remains protected.
Can artists get their rights back from a label or publisher?
Through three routes: contractual reversion (licence terms ending, or reversion triggers in the deal), statutory rights (chiefly the US termination right reclaiming US rights roughly 35 years after a grant), and practically, by re-recording songs they own once restrictions expire and moving value to masters they control.
What did the Taylor Swift re-recordings prove?
That an artist who owns their songs but not their masters can rebuild the masters' value under their own ownership: new recordings they control, licensed on their terms, with fan attention deliberately steered to them. Labels now draft longer re-recording restrictions in response.
Learn this properly
The interactive lessons on this topic, with sourced figures and live simulators: