Release and distribute a track
Ownership, registration and the two separate rights in every recording.
What reaches you, and in what order
Copyright Act 1987
Act 332Two rights live in every release: the composition and the sound recording, often owned by different people. Section 26 gives first ownership and s.26(2) quietly moves it for commissioned work and work made in employment. Section 27(3) is stricter than most people assume: no assignment and no licence of any kind, exclusive or not, has effect unless it is in writing. Copyright itself arises automatically on fixation with no registration, but Voluntary Notification under s.26A puts your claim on a public register and a certified extract is prima facie evidence in court.
Collecting societies
Licensing bodiesRegister with MACP as a writer and RPM as a performer, or you collect nothing from public performance and broadcast no matter how heavily you are played. If you own the master, PPM is a third registration.
Trademarks Act 2019
Act 815The artist name and the label name. Registration gives a monopoly in the registered classes; without it you are left with passing off, which is slower and harder to prove.
Berne Convention
TreatyYou are protected in every member state automatically, with no registration or formality. That is the answer to whether you need to register your copyright overseas.
WPPT
TreatyThe international floor for performers' and producers' rights, and the source of the performers' rights provisions in the Copyright Act.
Contracts Act 1950
Act 136Splits, producer points, the distribution deal and the label agreement are all contract. Section 28 makes restraint of trade void, which weakens most exclusivity.
Stamp Act 1949
Act 378Stamp within thirty days of execution. Late stamping costs you the unpaid duty plus, under s.47A, RM50 or ten per cent of the deficient duty (whichever is greater) if you fix it within three months of the deadline, and RM100 or twenty per cent (whichever is greater) after that. Since 1 January 2026 most arts agreements fall in Phase 1 of the stamp duty self-assessment system, which means you assess and pay through MyTax yourself and can be audited on it afterwards. LHDN has waived certain 2026 penalties for getting the self-assessed return wrong, but that waiver does not touch late stamping, so an old unstamped agreement is still a full-penalty problem.
Income Tax Act 1967
Act 53The increase is not the worst of it. Section 39(1)(q) disallows the whole fee as a deduction if the tax was not withheld and paid over, and you only get the deduction back by paying the tax and the ten per cent increase. On a six-figure fee that turns a five-figure problem into a six-figure one. The Director General can remit the increase for good cause under s.109(3A), but do not plan on it.
Optical Discs Act 2000
Act 606This licenses the plant, not you. Anyone manufacturing optical discs without a licence commits an offence, so check your replicator holds a current one before you place a CD or DVD order. It does not touch vinyl or cassette, which are not optical media.
Most Malaysian artists are members of nothing. The recording can be everywhere and the public performance money stays unclaimed because no one registered the work.
Related situations
DJ a club night
You are playing other people's recordings to a paying room. Three separate licences, one venue licence, a stat…
ScenarioLicence a song for an ad, film or game
Two permissions, usually from two different owners, and a blanket licence is neither of them.…
ScenarioSign a management, label or agency deal
** `What you assign you do not get back. And the clause that looks like a life sentence is often weaker than i…
This page is published by ALIM (Art × Law Initiative Malaysia) as general legal information for Malaysia’s creative communities. It is not legal advice. It does not take your circumstances into account, and reading it does not create a solicitor-client relationship with ALIM or with anyone associated with it.
The law changes. Each Act reproduced here is the Attorney General’s Chambers’ consolidated reprint and carries the date it was consolidated to; amendments made after that date do not appear in the text, and the authoritative version of any Malaysian law is the one published in the Federal Gazette. Subsidiary legislation, state enactments and local authority by-laws may also apply to your situation and are largely outside this library.
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