So you've written a song...but how do you prove you actually own it? Distributors, music supervisors, or even lawyers may ask you to do so during copyright infringement disputes, but how can you prove the song belongs to you? Is copyright protection that automatically applies to all creative pieces enough, or should you take some additional steps? What should you do if you're not signed to a big label that handles these issues for you?
We asked lawyers these and other questions so that you don't have to.
💡 Read also: What Does It Mean to Own Your Masters? Explained
The first and the most obvious advice would be to keep all drafts, recordings, and written compositions with a clear date. You can email them to yourself or use a timestamping service; some platforms, like blockchain-based services, offer immutable timestamps to prove when a work was created. Although this isn’t as strong as official copyright registration, it can help prove you created the work at a specific time.
Publishing your music through a reputable platform (e.g., streaming services, Bandcamp, or even on your own website) can also be proof of ownership since it establishes a public record of the release date. Organisations like ASCAP, BMI, or PRS for Music can help track public performances and ensure you’re paid royalties, so registering with them can also provide evidence of your ownership. If you worked with others for a song, make sure to have written agreements outlining who owns what percentage of the music, which is especially important if disputes arise later.
And now a mic to our experts.
🎙 Celeste Moy, Rimon Law
Registration is not necessary but highly recommended, especially in today's online copy and paste world. Registration puts everyone on notice that you own your creative work, and establishes the date of creation in the event you need to file or defend a copyright infringement claim.
Equally important, if you ever need to sue someone for infringement, only registered copyrighted works are entitled to statutory damages and attorney's fees.
If you're signed to a recording label and want to protect and prove your ownership, this depends on the terms of the Artist Agreement with the label. These agreements typically include the assignment of the Artist's rights in the creative works covered by the Agreement, and it's then the label's responsibility to protect the works, collect and pay the Artist his/her share of the royalties, or make sure that the Artist is registered with all the applicable royalty payers such as the Publisher, BMI or ASCAP, and SoundExchange.
If you have bought a song, you can register the purchase agreement with the copyright office to provide public notice of the change of ownership. Although this won't give you 100% protection from copyright infringement, registration provides public notice that you are the copyright owner as of a date certain.
🎙 Reshaun Finkley, Townsend & Lockett attorney
It is not necessary to register your works with the Copyright Office because common law copyright protection begins when a creative writes and/or records a song in a tangible medium. There are benefits to registering your song with the US Copyright Office, though, such as creating a public record of your ownership of the song, you can receive statutory damages up to $150k per infringement and can be awarded attorneys fees and court costs if successful in winning your copyright infringement lawsuit. You have a duty to protect and defend your copyright at all times as the copyright owner by taking action quickly when infringement is discovered. A copyright infringement claim is viable if it is brought within three years of the infringement being discovered.
At a minimum, a musician should save their music on a cloud service, email account and on a physical hard drive that shows the date/time stamp the song was saved or uploaded.
Another way to protect and prove ownership is to use the date that the song/album was distributed in retail stores and/or released on a digital service provider such as Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, iTunes, Tidal and Amazon Music. I always recommend that musicians register their songs and/or albums with the US Copyright Office within three months of the release date. The copyright right fee is approximately $65.00 per album.
If a piece of music is bought, there has to be a written agreement between the parties, whether it is a songwriter agreement, producer agreement, work-for-hire agreement or an assignment of ownership of the master to the person who purchased the piece of music.
🎙 Daniel Abowd, Royalty Network, independent, self-funded music publisher
Beyond registration with the Copyright Office, registering works with performing rights organisations and other rights management organisations is essential. For songwriters, that means ASCAP/BMI/etc., the MLC, and other organisations that administer blanket licenses (e.g., Harry Fox). As a practical matter, these organisations make ownership "decisions" all the time when they decide how to distribute royalties. Many also maintain public databases that can direct a potential user of your music in the marketplace to the proper rightsholder to obtain a license.
Recordation with the Copyright Office is the mechanism provided under formal copyright law but, again, as a practical matter, notifying the relevant rights management organisations (and providing the substantiating documentation required by each organisation) is likely to be more the immediately impactful step.
Even if someone is infringing your work, detecting and becoming aware of that infringement can be difficult, and the efforts required to proactively monitor the marketplace can be prohibitive. And in any case, registration at the Copyright Office is simply a prerequisite to bringing an infringement suit, not any guarantee that your lawsuit will succeed; actually prevailing on an infringement claim typically requires establishing jurisdiction over the defendant (which can be particularly difficult for foreign infringers), and then proving access, similarity, among other legal requirements.
🎙 Bryan Biniak, President of Songtradr, a music licensing platform.
You don't need to do anything else for your work to be protected by copyright. As the owner of your music, copyright gives you the right to make and sell copies, distribute those copies, make new works based on your work, and, with some limitations explained below, publicly perform or display the work.
However, in the US, you may wish to register your work with the US Copyright Office, which has a few additional advantages — it establishes a public record of your copyright claim, it allows you to bring an infringement suit in court, and can make you eligible to receive statutory damages, attorneys’ fees, and costs if you do bring an infringement suit. We talk more about registering with the Copyright Office below.
If a musician, particularly a small indie artist not signed with a label, wants to protect and prove their ownership of their music, in addition to registering the work with the Copyright Office, they should follow several key steps:
- One of the most critical steps is to register the music with a performing rights organisation (PRO) or a music rights management platform like Songtradr. By doing so, the artist ensures that they can collect royalties whenever their music is played or licensed.
- Platforms like Songtradr offer tools that help artists manage and protect their digital rights. By uploading their music to Songtradr, artists can license their work directly to businesses, filmmakers, and other content creators, while keeping track of where and how their music is being used.
- It's essential for artists to keep detailed records of the creation process, including date-stamped files, and properly tag their music with metadata. This helps in proving ownership if any disputes arise.
- In the digital age, using blockchain technology or timestamping services can provide an immutable record of ownership or, at the very least, the time of creation, adding another layer of security for indie artists.
If a piece of music is licensed, the licensee can prove the right to exploit the music through a couple of methods. The most straightforward way is through a legal contract that clearly outlines the details of the licence. This document should include details such as the terms of licence (term, territory, price), rights being licensed, and signatures of both parties. If the music was licensed through a platform like Songtradr, the licensee would receive documentation from the platform confirming the licenser of rights.
✅ Have a question you want us to answer? Let us know at editors@killthedj.com.
