COPYRIGHTS & WRONGS-A Guide to protecting your music....2

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IN THE WORKS....

Musicians, songwriters, and recording artists typically encounter two types of copyrightable work: the first is the particular arrangement of notes and lyrics; the second is, the song itself. This is usually referred to as a musical composition, an underlying work (when referenced in relation to a sound recording), or just a song.

A song may have multiple writers, lyricists and arrangers, and the copyright can be split among them on a percentage basis. If you are writing with a partner or you involve others in your creative process, be sure to discuss early on how or if you will divvy up the copyright. Some songwriters assign all or a portion of their copyright to a music publisher who has agreed to market the song for them.

The second type of work you need to protect is the sound recording itself. A song may be recorded by any number of people so each recorded rendition is copyrightable. Even if you write as well as record the song, you need to protect your composition and your recording with separate copyrights. And, as with a musical composition, there may be others involved in the recording process, such as producers, who are entitled to a portion of the copyright. When an artist is signed to a record label, the label often retains the copyright of the master recording.

More tomorrow....

COPYRIGHTS & WRONGS-A Guide to protecting your music....1

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Well, the Music Publishing series went well and there were many responses clearly indicating that it is information that was useful and very much wanted. Today we will begin our series on Copyrights and Wrongs. There will be 7 editions to this series so keep a look out for them over the next 10 days, not counting the holiday coming up.

As an artist, your creative works are the lifeline of your business. By protecting them through copyright registration, you can control how they're used and ensure that you receive the income from them that you deserve.

To make the system function for you, you have to understand how it works. To that end, we'll explain a number of important music-copyright issues, such as what constitutes a copyrightable work, how to properly register a work, what rights you have if you're hired to write a song, and what happens to your copyright when you die. But remember, if you have copyright questions, consult a qualified attorney; this series should not be considered legal advice.

Just the fact...

In its most rudimentary definition, a copyright is actually personal property. But like trademarks and patents, a copyright is regarded as intellectual property, which is created from the minds of its authors. Copyright protection applies to literary works, musical compositions and recordings, dramatic works, choreography, and visual arts.

When you own the rights to a song, you control its use. Ownership gives you six exclusive rights: the right to make copies, creative derivative works and revisions, publish and distribute your creation, perform the work in public (or display it, in the case of visual art), and, in the case of sound recordings, perform it in public through a digital transmission (currently this refers to songs played on the Web). As an owner, you can even assign the whole copyright or shares of it to others.

For a song to be copyrightable, it must meet three criteria. First, your work must be fixed in a tangible form--it must be written down or recorded, so others can perceive it. Second, it has to be original, meaning that someone else hasn't already created it. And, third, it must demonstrate at least a modicum of creative expression...


More tomorrow.....

More Cost-Saving Strategies

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You can decrease your cost per song by registering multiple songs at once as a collection, paying a single fee for the entire lot. For example, the title of your collection might be "Collection of Songs From Tennessee: 1. I Love You Dearly, 2. Baby, Don't Leave Me, 3. I Hate You For Leaving,"where the collection's title is arbitrary and followed by the tiltes of each song you want to register. The Copyright Office recently announced its intention to charge a fee of $1 per title for electronic claims and $3 per title for paper claims listing titles of individual works in song collections. This isn't simply price grouping on the part of the Copyright Office; the additional fees help pay for keeping track of individual songs in a collection so they will show up in a database search. That way, someone won't have to know a song collection's provisional title in order to locate an included song's copyright owner. Current copyright fees are listed at www.copyright.gov/docs.

MasterWriter (www.masterwriter.com) offers its Web-based Songuard service as an alternative means of protecting your songs at greatly reduced cost. When you buy MasterWriter software, which is an outstanding songwriting application (see the review in the April 2004 issue at emusician.com), you get a free one-year subscription to the Songuard service; the fee for the service is $30 annually after the first year. Songuard registers and stores the date of creation of your song's melody and lyrics on the company's server. That's useful in protecting a song in it's development stage. Once the song is published, however, there are important benefits to registering it with the Copyright Office, including the right to be re-imbursed for attorneys' fees in a successful copyright-infringement proceeding.

Songs that were previously registered with the Copyright Office when they were unpublished need not be registered again after publication. However, you will need to deposit two complete phonrecords of the published sound recording's "best edition," along with any phonorecord packaging, with the Copyright Office. (Go to www.copyright.gove for more information.) If this isn't done withinh theree months of publication, you'll be levied a hefty fine. It's a silly, antiquated requirement, but it's the law. Songs available only as internet downloads are currently exempt from this requirement.

To run a smooth operation, you'll need to maintain a modest inventory for your company. Obviously, you'll need business letterhead and either custom mailing labels or preprinted mailers that include your company's logo and address. For making copies of your song demos, you'll need blank CDs with printable surfaces and a color printer that can print directly on CDs. The printer will likely come with software you can use to develop a template file for printing song titles and contact information on your CDs and importing your company's logo as a background graphic. Don't use CD labels--if they are applied out-of-round to your CDs, the disc won't play on some players. Buy extra ink tanks or cartridges before you run out. And keep a good supply of slimline CD cases or clamshells on hand for securing your CDs inside mailers.

Print several lyric sheets for each song in your catalog so you'll always have them on hand for urgent mailings. Lyrics should also be stored in electronic form so you can quickly paste them into emails when sending MP3's to industry contacts.

We will discuss the topic of Demo Production tomorrow...

I am overwhelmed by the amount of emails coming in from all of regarding this series. If there is a topic in the music industry you want to further discuss, please continue to feed us the topics. We will review them and discuss them based on your demands.

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...