Section 2(d) says the author of a sound recording is the producer. Everyone reads that, thinks of the person who made the track, and writes their name in Column 7.
That is the trap, and it is entirely a language problem.
What the Act means by “producer”
Section 2(uu) defines it: the producer, in relation to a sound recording, means “a person who takes the initiative and responsibility for making the work”.
Not the person who arranged it, programmed it, played on it or is credited as “Music Produced By”. The person or entity that decided the recording would exist, paid for it, and carried the risk of it failing.
For a label, that is normally the label: the firm that commissioned the session, booked the studio and would have absorbed the loss. For a self-releasing artist funding their own record, it is the artist. The test is initiative and responsibility, not craft.
Why it matters more than a naming quibble
The author column is not cosmetic. It feeds the register entry and the certificate, it interacts with the consents you have to file, and it is a field examiners actually query.
When a query does come, the Office’s wording is permissive rather than prescriptive. It says a producer can be the author of a sound recording, and that the name of the producing company can therefore appear in that column. You are being invited to clarify, not told you filed something void.
But the same query carries a sting in its tail, and this is the part worth knowing before you choose: if an individual is named as the sole creator of the work, the Office asks for an affidavit to that effect. Naming a person rather than the company is not refused. It is escalated into an extra notarised document you then have to produce and post.
What this looks like on the form
For a track a label wrote, recorded and released:
| Filing | Column 7 | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Musical work | the composer, by name, every co-composer, and the lyricist | s.2(d)(ii), and see below |
| Sound recording | the company, if it took the initiative and paid | s.2(uu) |
Being straight about this one
We would rather tell you what our own filings actually did than pretend we always got this right.
We have used both answers. Our earlier recording filings named an individual in Column 7. Our later ones name the firm. So we are not describing a rule we have always followed, we are describing where we landed after being asked about it.
Naming an individual is not fatal. We have had a filing that named a person in that column go all the way to a granted certificate with no query at all, the individual recorded as author and the firm recorded as owner. If you have already filed that way, nothing is necessarily wrong with your application.
But it is the field most likely to cost you time. We have also had a filing that named an individual draw exactly the query described above. Same column, same kind of song, different outcome. The company answer is the one that matches the statutory test for a record the label commissioned and paid for, and it is the one that does not invite a request for an affidavit.
So: if the label took the initiative and carried the cost, name the label. If you have already named a person, do not panic, but be ready to explain the choice.
The arranger and the singers do not need to be in Column 7 for their rights to be covered. Those are handled by the consent set, which is the next thing that decides whether it registers.
Two details that follow from it
The remarks column is where the nuance goes. If the company is the author, the remarks are where you say, in your own words, who arranged and who sang. That text is reproduced verbatim on the certificate, so write it for a stranger reading it years later.
Author and owner are separate tables on the certificate. Naming the company in Column 7 does not erase the humans, it records the right party for the class of work, and the remarks and the consents carry the rest.
Next: the consent set an SR filing lives or dies on. Up: Sound Recording copyright.