What Is a Cover Version? Recording a Song Somebody Else Already Made Famous

Two separate things are protected and the distinction explains nearly everything about the practice. The composition, which is the melody and the words, belongs to whoever wrote it. The recording of a particular performance belongs to whoever made it, which is usually a label. A cover reproduces the composition in a new recording, so it requires permission for the composition and needs nothing from the owner of the earlier recording, and the songwriter is paid regardless of who performs. That arrangement is why covering is straightforward while sampling an existing recording is legally far more difficult. In many jurisdictions a compulsory licence applies, meaning that once a composition has been recorded and released, anyone may record their own version by paying a set rate, and the songwriter cannot refuse, which was a deliberate policy choice to prevent exclusive control over songs.

The motivations are varied and have shifted with the industry:

• •Reinterpretation, where an artist finds something in a song that the original treatment did not bring out
• •Homage, acknowledging an influence directly
• •Repertoire, since performers have always needed material and writing it is a separate skill
• •Commercial calculation, since a familiar song lowers the risk of an unfamiliar artist
• •Genre translation, taking a song into an idiom it was not written for, which is where the most striking examples come from
• •Historical continuation, since in folk and traditional music the distinction between original and cover barely applies

Before recording, a song existed as sheet music and any performance was as legitimate as any other, so the notion of a cover made no sense, and the music publishing business sold songs rather than performances. Recording changed that gradually, and by the middle of the twentieth century a particular recording had become the reference version against which others were measured, which created the category. The industry then used the practice in a specific and now notorious way, with established labels commissioning versions of songs first recorded by black artists for white performers, marketing them to a larger audience and frequently outselling the originals, which transferred both money and credit. That history is part of why the word carries some ambivalence, and it is also why the compulsory licence, intended to keep songs available to everyone, had consequences its drafters did not anticipate.

Playing someone else's song on a stage is governed differently from recording it, and the arrangement is invisible to most performers. Venues rather than musicians typically hold blanket licences from collecting societies, which permit any song in the society's repertoire to be performed, and the fees collected are distributed to writers according to sampling and reporting of what was played. That system means a musician in a licensed venue need do nothing, and it also means the distribution to individual writers is approximate rather than exact, which has been a long-running complaint from writers whose songs are played mainly in small venues. Recording a live performance for release is a separate matter requiring the ordinary licence. Posting a video of a performance online is handled by agreements between platforms and rights holders, which is why such videos are sometimes muted or monetised on the writer's behalf rather than removed.

A number of songs are known overwhelmingly through a version that was not the first, and the pattern in those cases is consistent. The successful version usually makes a substantial change rather than a faithful reproduction, altering tempo, instrumentation, arrangement or emotional register enough that it becomes a different statement using the same material. Many were originally album tracks or minor releases that attracted little attention, so there was no established version to displace. Some benefited from a performer whose voice suited the song better than the writer's. And several writers have said they prefer the other version, which is a reasonable position given that writing and performing are different skills. The general lesson is that a song is a structure rather than a fixed object, and that a good one supports readings its author did not have in mind.

The composition and the recording are separately owned, so a new recording needs permission for the song and nothing from the earlier recording, which is why covering is easy and sampling is hard. A compulsory licence in many places means the writer cannot refuse. The idea only makes sense once a particular recording became the reference version, and the industry used the practice to transfer money and credit away from the originators.