Mechanical license

In copyright law, a mechanical license is a license that grants certain limited permissions to work with, study, improve upon, reinterpret, re-record (etc.) something that is neither a free/open source item nor in the public domain.

With regards to copyrights of musical recordings, there are at least two distinct copyrights. There is (1) the copyright of the composition, embodied in the sheet music (the “musical work”), which may include separate copyrights for lyrics or composition; and (2) the copyright in the sound recording, embodied as a “phonorecord” (Please note that the law considers ANY tangible medium capable of storing a recording to be a phonorecord. This includes MP3 players, CDs, 8-tracks, vinyl records, cassette tapes, or any future technology.) It is not unusual for one party to own the copyright in the underlying musical work while another, independent, party owns the copyright to the phonorecord.