A — Foundations (definitions + core concepts)

A commercially released track is often experienced as a single product, but it usually contains two works:

• Composition (C) — the underlying musical work: most students should anchor this to melody and lyrics first, because those are the easiest elements to identify and document. In professional practice, other original musical expression can also be part of the composition (for example, distinctive combinations of rhythm and harmony), but not every groove, pattern, or commonly used building block automatically qualifies as protectable authorship.
• Sound Recording (SR) — a fixed recording of a performance/production of that composition: the captured vocals and instruments, the production choices, and the final audio file commonly called the master.

The distinction is not academic. It is operational:

• A composition can exist without a released recording (a lyric + melody drafted and written down; a demo; sheet music).
• A sound recording cannot exist without fixation (it is, by definition, a fixed recording).

Release (what listeners hear)
 ├─ Composition (C): the underlying musical work (“the song”)
 └─ Sound Recording (SR): the fixed recording (“the master”)
          

Fixation and “what changes”

A useful way to think about change is to ask whether you have changed the underlying musical work or a particular recording of it.

• If you re-record the song from scratch, you typically create a new sound recording while referencing the same underlying composition.
• If you reuse an existing audio file (or stems from it), you are almost certainly using the same sound recording.

C / SR / Both: the course classification method

The point of the method is speed and accuracy under real conditions (deadlines, collaborators, partial information).

This course uses C/SR/Both as a classification tool for business reasoning; actual clearance can vary by facts, platform policies, and existing licenses, so classification is the first step—not the last.