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By Emilio Basa
Copyright as stated in the dictionary is "the exclusive legal right to
reproduce, publish, sell or distribute the matter and form of something (as
a literary, musical, or artistic work)." According to this definition,
copyright is ownership. You own it so you can do whatever you want with it.
You can make more, give it away, hand it out, sell it, etc...
A copyright according to the book, "All You Need to Know About the Music
Business", is a "limited duration monopoly". When you have a
song that you have written by yourself, you must properly register your song's
copyright and you and your heirs will have full exclusive control of that song
for your own life and 70 more years.
Where to register your original work
The proper method to register a song for a copyright is to register that work
with the Library of Congress (LOC). They have all the proper forms to register
the work. One of the most important reason to register your song through the
LOC is that they register an official date on the copyright. I've seen some
musicians mail themselves the lyrics to their song or mail the cd to the themselves
and use the postmark on the envelope to use as their copyright date. That is
a possible method, but if someone else were to properly register that same
song for a copyright with the LOC and you had to go to court, they might have
the upper hand because they did it the proper route. In other words, registering
your copyright with the LOC stands up better in court.
If by chance your song is used without your permission,
the date of the copyright will be used by the courts to affirm that the unauthorized
use of your song has happened. This unauthorized use of copyrighted materials
is called "infringement." Once
you have your work registered, copyright law is now in effect to protect your
rights to that work. The penalities to someone who uses your work without your
consent can be huge going from $750 to $30,000 for each work that was infringed
on. If the defendant infringed knowing that it was not their work, they could
face fines up to $150,000.
A copyright owner's 5 exclusive rights
Once you have a song that you've registered with the LOC, you
have the foundation use your song to earn money. Song copyright owners experience
the same five exclusive rights that any author of a novel, screenplay, painting,
poem, or other intellectual work has. These include the right to exclusively:
- Reproduce the work
- Distribute the work
- Perform the work in public
- Allow a derivative work to be made
- Display the work in public (applies mostly to visual media and artwork)
If anyone else were to make copies of the copyrighted work without the permission
of the owner, they violated the exclusive rights reserved for the that author.
Music Publishers
It is standard practice for a songwriter to assign the copyright of their
song to a music publisher. The music publisher in turn will do what they are
best at and that is making money off of that song. The music publisher in turn
develops as many licenses as possible for your song. Examples of this are placing
your songs in TV, film and video games. They can also use your song in a commercial,
greeting card, or a compilation album.
Normally a songwriter will split the money 50-50 with their music publisher.
The 50% is for the hard work that the music publisher puts into the artists
song. If it weren't for the music publishers hard work, then that song might
have never made it on TV, film, video games, etc. When that song is chosen
and performed on radio or TV, it creates a public performance royalty. There
are 3 Performance Rights Organizations (PROs) in the US. The 3 are ASCAP, BMI,
SESAC, These organizations watch and monitor where your song is played and
then they collect a royal on the behalf of the songwriter and publisher. An
author can only sign up to one of the PRO's.
Emilio Basa is an independent singer songwriter. He offers strategies and
advice on artist promotion and selling music online. His unique style is a
blend of folk, pop and soul.
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