Released · v1

The Music Business Lexicon

14 terms from the recorded-music and publishing industries, each with the mechanism by which it moves money, a worked example, what it is commonly confused with, and a primary source. Machine-readable, openly licensed, and it is the same file the glossary pages are generated from.

CC-BY 4.0 30 entries Commercial use OK as_of 2026-08-11

Download lexicon.json Read it as pages

This dataset is the source of truth, not an export of it. Every glossary page on this site is generated from this file, so the published pages and the open data cannot drift apart. If you find an error in one, it is an error in both, and fixing the file fixes both.

What is in each record

Scope, and what it deliberately excludes

Mechanisms, not rates. Statutory and negotiated rates are jurisdiction- and period-specific, so this dataset teaches how a term works rather than quoting a figure that would be stale within a year.

How to use it

Reuse is permitted including commercially. Attribute RapCanon and link back, and you are done, with no permission request necessary. Build a tool on it, embed it, translate it, correct it. Coverage spans credits, economics, ownership.

Corrections

Errors are fixed in the dataset and the version is incremented, so a correction propagates to every page in one step. If you find one, that is a contribution rather than a complaint.

Data by RapCanon. Free to reuse, including commercially, with attribution and a link back. Method standard: how we source.