How
to copyright your music or song
The
US Library of Congress and the US Copyright
Office have lots of great information and tell you what is covered
and what is not and why. On the US Copyright web site in
their FAQ it has some great information on why to copyright
your music. In a first general sense, after you have created
any type of musical work and put it to a permanent format
that fits in the description of: “Sound recordings are
“works that result from the fixation of a series of musical,
spoken, or other sounds, but not including the sounds accompanying
a motion picture or other audiovisual work.” Common examples
include recordings of music, drama, or lectures” (from
US copyright web site) . After making a permanent recording
of the work you own it but, it is not protected by the law because
it must be registered.
In
the same FAQ page it also talks about
the “poor mans copyright”. The poor mans copyright
is the practice of sending a copy of your own work to yourself
is sometimes called a “poor man’s copyright.”
There is no provision in the copyright law regarding any such
type of protection, and it is not a substitute for registration.
Copyrighting your work is not a requirement and the basic definition
is “Copyright exists from the moment the work is created.”
( Copyright.gov FAQ ) The main reason to copyright is to
have the right to bring law suit for any infringements on your
copyrights. Without it would be extremely difficult to sue anyone
for a breach. See documents Copyright Basics,
section “Copyright
Registration” and Circular
38b from the US Copyright office for more information.
There
are a few online business that claim
to register for copyright your works but the fact is that the
US Copyright Office is the ONLY place that you can register
and receive official certification documentation of your work/works.
The current filling application fee is $45.00 for a single application.
Each work must be registered separately but you can also file
an application as a collection in a single registration filing
to get around this. Forms for registering a collection can be
found at Form
CON . There are restrictions on how the form is filled out
and how the works are presented on the media you send to the
copyright office. See the "Registration Procedures"
in the
Copyright Registration document for more information.
When you send your completed
form and recorded media to the
copyright office do not expect to have the materials returned
to you as they will place it in a library archive. Be sure to
make copies of your registration papers before you send them
out because they will not send you copies of the completed forms
you send. Be sure to send the completed form, the best reproduction
of the recordings you can make and a check for $45.00. There
are currently no online registration at this time and you must
send a hard copy paper form and physical recording media such
as a CD ROM tape Cassette tape or vinyl record as the sample
media.
The
general estimated time it takes the copyright
office to respond to you and send you your certification documentation
is about four months. That is also providing that your form
was filled out correctly and they do not have a long back load
of things to process for copyright at the time. The copyright
registration lasts for five years so every five years you will
need to file for registration.
We
would recommend
for all artists to file their forms as collections to keep costs
low as an albums worth of music or songs could be quite costly
at $45.00 per filing.
Best
of luck to all of you, Sellatune.com staff |
