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Hi.

I'm Purbayan Chatterjee.

I'm fundamentally a sitar player, but I'm also a composer, sometimes a music director, sometimes an arranger, sometimes an artistic director.

Sometimes I curate events.

I do it all.

When we think of songs, a lot of people think about what they hear and when they stream music or put a record on, what comes to their ears.

But a recorded song is actually made up of two separate pieces: the musical work and the sound recording.

It's very important to know the difference in order to understand the music industry and your rights as a creator.

The musical work is all the notes, the chords, the rhythms, words and other pieces that make up the musical composition and lyrics.

It's what songwriters create.

A sound recording on the other hand, captures a sound whether it's created or performed, in a fixed format that can be shared and heard by a wider audience.

And it can be any sort of sound on any sort of medium, not just music.

So sound effects, podcasts and that sort of thing can also count as sound recordings.

The reason this is important is because sound recordings have their own separate intellectual property rights from whatever musical works they may contain.

And like musical works they are also automatically protected by law.

Recording Basics

2 min read

October 8, 2026

What is a recording?

A recording is a physical or digital representation of a performance of a musical work.

Before we begin, a quick note about the word . It is commonly used to describe what music creators create, but it's important to understand that song can mean either a or a . So, whenever we speak of a song, we always mean both the musical work and the sound recording together.

In order for you, as a music creator, to receive your and fair compensation for your contribution, it is of the utmost importance to understand which part of the song you contributed to. So, for clarity, we will only use the correct legal terms musical work and sound recording from here on.

What is a sound recording?

In simple terms, sound recordings capture the of a musical work, which can then be reproduced, distributed, and played to wider audiences.

Sound recordings have been around for a long time, first as physical products, like vinyl, cassettes, and CDs, and now predominantly made available to listeners through streaming services on digital formats like WAV, MP3, and FLAC.

Under , sound recordings are referred to and protected as , defined as a of sounds exclusively. But a sound recording can comprise any sort of sound, not just music, for example, podcasts or audiobooks.

As a , you can be involved in both the songwriting that creates the musical work and the recording that creates a sound recording. Under certain conditions, both the musical work and sound recording are automatically protected by law. Each has separate .

Understanding these rights is the first step to getting you properly credited and paid. For a deep dive into rights, explore our Music Creators’ Rights, Rights Transfer and Licensing, and Scope of Protection topics.

Continue to Recording Roles to learn more about the recording process and the associated roles.

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Video Credit: Amin Santosh, Parapix