Here’s a question that trips up a lot of artists before their first cover release: if you don’t own the rights to a song, how can you legally record and distribute a version of it? The short answer is that you’re not supposed to own those rights — the law already has a system built for exactly this situation. Understanding how that system works is the difference between a smooth release and a takedown notice.
The Legal Foundation: Compulsory Mechanical Licensing
In the United States, copyright law includes something called a compulsory mechanical license (Section 115 of the Copyright Act). It exists specifically so that any songwriter’s composition can be covered by another artist without needing personal permission from the original writer or publisher, as long as certain conditions are met:
- The original song has already been commercially released
- You don’t change the fundamental melody or lyrics in a way that alters the song’s basic character
- You pay the required royalty to the songwriter/publisher, calculated per stream or per sale
This is the mechanism that makes cover songs legal on a mass scale. You’re not asking the original artist for a favor — you’re exercising a right the law grants you, in exchange for compensating the people who wrote the composition.
What You Own vs. What You Don’t
This is where a lot of confusion starts, so it helps to separate two things clearly:
The Composition (the song itself)
This is the melody, lyrics, and chord structure — owned by the songwriter and their publisher. You don’t own this, and you never will just by recording a cover. This is the piece covered by mechanical licensing.
The Sound Recording (your specific version)
This is the actual audio file of your performance — your vocals, your arrangement, your production choices. This part you do own, the moment you record it. Nobody can take your recording of your cover away from you, even though they still own the underlying song.
So when you release a cover, you’re not claiming ownership of the song. You’re releasing a new recording of someone else’s composition, licensed properly, with your own performance rights intact on the recording itself.
What’s Actually Allowed Without Special Permission
Based on the compulsory license framework, here’s what you can do without contacting the songwriter directly:
- Record and distribute audio-only covers to streaming platforms, as long as mechanical royalties are being paid
- Make reasonable arrangement changes — different tempo, instrumentation, genre shift (a folk version of a pop song, for example)
- Release the cover under your own artist name, crediting the original songwriter
- Sell or stream the recording commercially, generating royalties split between you (as the recording owner) and the songwriter (via mechanical royalties)
What Requires Separate Permission
The compulsory license has real limits. These situations fall outside it and need direct clearance from the rights holder:
- Music videos or any visual pairing — this triggers a synchronization license, which is negotiated individually, not automatic
- Samples of the original recording — if you use an actual audio clip from the original track rather than performing it yourself, that’s a master use issue, separate from mechanical licensing entirely
- Significant lyric or melody changes — parody, translation with altered meaning, or major rewrites can cross into derivative work territory requiring permission
- Unreleased songs — the compulsory license only applies to compositions that have already been commercially released; you can’t be the first to release a song someone else wrote
Where Distribution Fits Into This
Here’s the practical part: most independent artists don’t file mechanical license paperwork themselves. It’s a bureaucratic process involving royalty rate calculations, notices of intent, and ongoing reporting — manageable for labels with legal teams, tedious for a solo artist trying to get a track onto Spotify.
This is why cover-friendly distributors bundle mechanical licensing into the release process automatically. At Globex Music, submitting a cover for distribution includes the licensing step as part of the $1 release price — no separate application, no waiting on a third-party licensing agency, no guessing whether you’ve covered your legal bases. Moderation typically moves quickly, so a properly licensed cover can go live across 200+ platforms without the process turning into a research project.
A Quick Cost Comparison
Licensing logistics aside, it’s worth seeing how covers are priced across services, since some charge extra fees specifically for cover songs on top of their base pricing:
- Globex Music: $1 per release, mechanical licensing included, no annual fee
- DistroKid: $44.99/year subscription, with licensing typically handled as an add-on
- TuneCore: $24.99/year base plan, plus per-cover licensing fees, plus a 20% commission specifically on social platform revenue
- CD Baby: $9.95 per single, plus a 9% commission on royalties that continues indefinitely
Over three cover releases, DistroKid and TuneCore’s annual fees are already sunk costs before a single stream happens, while CD Baby’s percentage cut keeps applying for as long as the song earns money. A pay-per-release model with licensing built in avoids both problems — you pay once per song, and there’s no recurring subscription tied to your catalog staying live.
The Bottom Line
Not owning a song’s rights isn’t a barrier to releasing a cover — it’s the normal, expected situation for every cover artist in music history. The law built compulsory licensing precisely so cover songs could exist at scale without individual negotiations. What matters is staying inside the boundaries: audio-only, no unauthorized samples, no unreleased material, and proper royalty payment to the original songwriter through a legitimate mechanical license. Handle those pieces correctly — or use a distributor that handles them for you — and there’s nothing standing between your version of the song and every major streaming platform.
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