Copyright Registration

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Once your music-publishing company is set up, you'll want to protect all the songs currently in your catalog from potential copyright infringement before making any preexisting demos broadly available for other people to hear. Protecting your songs entails establishing a creation date for each with an unaffiliated third party. One way to do this is to register your songs with the Copyright office.

Registration forms can be downloaded for free (www.copyright.gov/forms). Use form PA (Performing Arts) for registering sheet music with the Copyright Office. You can use form SR (Sound Recording) to register both an audio recording of the song and the underlying composition--melody, lyrics and arrangement--at once. The recording needn't be the fully produced version of the song; it only has to clearly convey the music and lyrics in order to protect the underlying song.

When you register your new songs with the Copyright Office, make sure you list your publishing company (not yourself) as the copyright owner, noting in the appropriate section of the registration form "transfer of all rights by the author(s)" as the means by which your company procured copyright ownership from the songwriter(s). By registering your company as the copyright owner, you give it the authority to issue licenses and collect revenues for the song's use by others.

You'll also want to transfer to your publishing company any songs previously copyrighted under your name. You may record this transfer with the Copyright Office, but it's an expensive way to go. The only practical reason to record copyright transfers with the Copyright Office, however, is to protect yourself from conflicting transfers (that is, someone else claiming that the song's copyright was transferred to them and not to you). This is moot if you're the only author of the song, as nobody can register a conflicting transfer unless you gave them your contractual consent to do so.

A valid, no-cost solution for transferring a song written solely by yourself to your publishing company is to draw up a simple document--signed by you and listing the title of the song being transferred--that agrees to the transfer (see online bonus material "From Me To Me" at emusician.com). You may then freely substitute the name of your publishing company in lieu of your personal name on all copyright notices for the song, such as on CD's and lyric sheets.

More Saving Strategies tomorrow...