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: After Writing

Music Business Plan, Part 8

By Pamela Parker, Esq.

The last two questions on your survey are related, but different issues:

I have material registered with the copyright office - both songs and recordings.

I have a complete list, somewhere, of what I have written, who wrote the songs, who played on the recordings, and written agreements with those players.

Copyright is a fairly simple concept, with some confusing elements. The gist is this: Any person who creates a "work" owns it and is entitled to determine whether and how it is used. The copyright exists the moment the work is created. You give notice of your copyright by putting the familiar c in circle mark, or simply writing the word "Copyright" followed by the year of creation and the name of the owner. In the United States, the ownership of that copyright can be registered with the US Copyright Office, which gives the owner the right to enforce their rights of copyright in the court system, if necessary.

It is not necessary to register works that you do not intend to do anything with, but when you begin to pitch songs, you should make sure that you register those pieces with the copyright office.

The second question is actually the more important of the two, and often much harder for artistic minded songwriters to answer positively. The nature of the music business is such that there is often a very long time period from creation to use, and as such it is extremely important to keep records of your material. Particularly if you are selling finished recordings for use in various media, you will need to be able to show that you have full rights to sell the use of the recording and to collect money for it. Which means, of course, that you have to have those rights and have the records and contracts to prove it.

Full post as published by After Writing on January 29, 2007 (boomark / email).