 The Copyright Act of 1909 mandated that all musical compositions would be subject to a compulsory license.In short, since 1909 the copyright law has allowed musicians to copy others’ songs by mechanical means (e.g., via piano roll or phonorecord/sound recording) without asking permission, so long as they paid a specified fee to the original songwriter.Anticipating that Congress was about to overturn White-Smith, Aeolian Company moved swiftly to buy up song rights from musicians and publishing companies so it could copy them onto player piano rolls.