Remember, the moment you finish writing a song, you own the copyright. What we’ll be discussing is protection of this right.

Let’s look back at the methods of protecting your songs:

• mailing yourself a copy of the song (also referred to as “poor man’s copyright”)
• governmental registration
• publication

First, I think it’s important to look at the reasons for protecting your songs in order to understand which level you need.

Scenario A

You’re sitting at home and you have a drawer filled with 50-odd songs. Nobody in the business knows you write songs (meaning you’ve never approached anyone in the business). You don’t play in a band or you play in a cover band, so you never bring your songs into the band.

What kind of protection do you need here?

Answer:
Amazingly, none. If nobody knows you write songs, who will steal them from you? If you live in a shabby district, in a run-down house, who is going to even suspect that there’s 2 million dollars stuffed in your mattress? The same applies here. If you happen to hear one of your songs on the radio, it’s just coincidence. Nobody can steal your songs if they’ve never heard them.

Recommendation:
Use poor man’s copyright method anyway. The reason? When you’ll need it you often won’t have the time to do it or, being an absent-minded artist or procrastinator, you’ll put it off and never do it. About this method, even if you read comments stating that this method is bogus because some guy has read of a case that was lost or even if a lawyer states in a forum that he would get that thrown out of court, it is still the method of choice recommended by agencies that protect songwriters (SOCAN, BMI, etc.). They will often recommend that you use registered mail, but it is not absolutely necessary, although it is a good choice.

Scenario B

You play in a band and bring in your original songs. Bands being what they are, it’s likely that the band, no matter how much you believe in it, won’t be together two years from now, so your songs might end up in a lot of different places.

Which method of protection should you use?

Answer:
If you can afford it, government registration is best. This is the level where you’re most likely to have your songs stolen. When the band breaks up, someone else might take your song into another band and honestly not realize that he didn’t write the song.

Recommendation:
Government registration implies a $35 fee. This may not sound like much, but for a starving artist it can mean the difference between eating this week and not eating this week. Make sure you at least use poor man’s method. If you do go for government registration, you only need to register the songs you’re bringing into the band, not your whole catalogue. Remember too, that you can copyright a group of songs for the price of one.

Scenario C

You’re sending demos out to record labels, producer, publishers, etc.

How should your songs be protected?

Answer:
Surprisingly, none. If you’re sending your songs out to professionals, people with a proven track record, they won’t steal your songs. If you’ve recorded a demo, too many people have heard your songs; the risk of stealing them is simply not worth it to them. Especially as you’re considered a nobody and they hear hundreds of songs a week. It’s extremely unlikely that your songs will be stolen.

Recommendation:
At the very least, poor man’s method. Government registration if you can afford it. Even though the risk is incredibly minimal, perhaps one of the person’s you’re sending your package out to has changed jobs and has been replaced by someone who is new in the business and is not quite honest. There is also the incredibly small, yet existing, chance that your CD will get mixed up with someone else’s and that they’ll get signed on the strength of your songs and think nothing of making them their own. As I said, although the risk is extremely low, it still worth spending a bit on protecting your work.

Scenario D

You have just recorded an independent album which you are self-releasing.

Increased protection, right?

Answer:
Wrong. Spend a bit more on your CD’s booklet and print the lyrics, all the lyrics, in it. Now you have published songs. The songs which are undeniably in audio form, with the lyrics and all writing credits are now out in the public, in a form which is available to a few hundred people. Believe it or not, but publication is even better protection than government registration. Consider it the ultimate in protection. You have proof positive of ownership and dates, etc. You have the musicians, engineer, producer, etc., who worked on the album with you who can bear witness that these are your songs.

Advantages and disadvantages of each method

Poor Man’s Method

• Advantages
  • Cheap (the cost of a stamp or registered mail)
  • Relatively fast: the package should arrive within a day or two
• Disadvantages
  • Easy to forget doing
  • Easy to lose: if lost, protection is also lost

Government Registration

• Advantages
  • The whole song (lyrics, chord progression and melody) is registered with the authorities
  • If you lose your registration certificate, they can send you another one and your protection is still dated to the moment you registered your song
• Disadvantages
  • Can be costly
  • Songs that are registered this way are available for anyone to see, thus increasing the risk of theft
  • Before the bureaucrats go through your request and forms, etc., it can take a while before registration becomes effective
  • You cannot post-date your copyrights

Publication

• Advantages
  • The absolute in song protection, all that makes your song is available for everyone to see, yet in a format which undeniably proves these are your songs
  • You can post-date your copyrights
• Disadvantages
  • Costly: you need not only to record an album, but also to produce enough copies (usually at least 100, but you check with your country’s laws on publication) to make it legal. This can run in the thousands of dollars

Remember that for anyone to claim ownership of your songs, they must prove that they wrote them before you did. They must also prove that you had opportunity to hear their song in order to eliminate the chance of coincidence.

Post-dating the Copyright

Just a quick word on this subject. As I’m sure you’re all aware, after a certain delay, a song or any other work of art falls into “public domain”. This means that nobody can be paid royalties on it. If, for example, you record Beethoven’s Sonate Pathétique, you don’t have to worry about paying copyright royalties, they are not due; there is no copyright.

Now laws change regularly on this subject and vary from country to country. It used to be that you (or your succession) owned a copyright for 50 years from the moment it was written, then it fell into public domain. Later governments offered the possibility of one copyright renewal which had to be registered (by yourself or your succession) before the end of those 50 years. The renewal was valid for another 50 years from the date of renewal. Now most countries have made them un-renewable, but have augmented the validity of a copyright to 75 or even 100 years. Check with your own country’s laws on the subject and be aware that this can change again over time.

In order to gain a longer protection, artists post-date their songs. If you look at the credits on a CD that came out this year, it should say something like “all songs ©2003, by …” It is possible that all the songs on that album were written this year, but that is generally not the case. Most of the time, a band or songwriter will bring in an older song that they’ve never recorded and it will still say ©2003 instead of ©1997. The reason for this is that they gain an extra six years before the song falls into public domain. Don’t worry, I’ve seen artists do this even when they have been playing the song live for 10 years or have admitted in interviews that the songs are much older than that. Greg Lake put the copyright date for Lucky Man as 1971 even though he admits to having written the song when he was 12, therefore in 1956.

They will usually have another form of protection for their songs anyway but know that it’s unlikely that they’ll ever get sued or need to sue. If the artist has an envelope from poor man’s method which dates back to 1997, it will be admissible in court anyway. The artist need only say that writing ©2003 on the CD jacket was a misprint or an oversight.

The thing to remember is that you should use poor man’s method as soon as possible just in case you need it later on. By doing it right away, you don’t forget it. You can also include a CD of yourself strumming and singing the song; don’t worry about the quality, as long as one can make out the song.

As for adding extra levels of protection, you should first ask yourself whether or not you really need it.

Copy Right = Copyright. Or does it?

The major problem people tend to have with the concept of copyright is the word itself. What does copyright say to you? Probably: the right to copy. Because of the way English has evolved, this tends to be the current tendency.

However, “copy” also refers to an original manuscript:

copy: 4 Manuscript or other matter to be reproduced in type

This definition (the “4″ referring to the fact that it is the 4th definition of the word) is from the Funk and Wagnalls Standard Dictionary, International Edition. This is the definition referred to in the word “copyright”. Hence we now have: the right of a manuscript. Clearer? I didn’t think so.

I couldn’t begin to tell you how copyright is translated in most languages, but, as the concept of Intellectual Property dates back to the Renaissance, French or Italian should do. Being French, I will use the French translation (or, probably, original).

In French, we say: le droit d’auteur. Literally, this means: the right of the author (droit means right as in the right to do something and not the direction, while auteur means author). Therefore, “the right of the author,” or the Author’s Rights. Starting to make more sense?

copyright: The exclusive statutory right of authors, composers, playwrights, artists, publishers, or distributors to publish and dispose of their works for a limited time.

This is again from the same dictionary.

It’s still not all that clear, but as soon as you start thinking of it as the Author’s Rights, it all becomes clearer. The copyright refers to what the Author (can be composer also, or any variation of Author/Composer) can do with his material. It simply points to the fact that all rights belong to the Author.

Now this is automatic. The moment a musical piece is complete, you own the copyright, the right to dispose of it any way you wish without having to ask anyone’s permission.

* It’s important to note that there are a few exceptions to this, mainly in the case of jingles: music or songs which are written specifically for advertising. As you get paid to write these pieces, the copyright is generally owned by the person paying you. If you do this kind of work, make sure you read your contract and that this point is clear.

What you do next is protect your intellectual property. I’ve talked about the envelope method in my previous article on the subject. This is not a foolproof method and many people will tell you it won’t stand up in court.

It may stand up in court and maybe it won’t. The idea is not to use this method as full protection, but as front line protection: until you register your copyrights.

Registration is the best protection you can get. It can be expensive, but it is worth the protection. With this method, nobody can steal any of your songs and you have complete proof of ownership.

For Canadians: good news! As I’ve mentioned before, registering your copyrights with the Canadian government is not worth the price of the paper the certificate is printed on. However, our American friends have thought of us poor artists. It is now legal to register your copyrights in the USA.

You can register a single song or a collection of songs on a CD or tape (I strongly recommend CD as tapes can and will deteriorate. Also, the songs can be just voice and an instrument that you’ve recorded in your bedroom) for $20.

You need a form called a “Circular 56: Copyright for Sound Recordings.”

The address is:

US Copyright Office
Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave. SE
Washington, DC 20559-6000

Tel.: 202-707-3000

email: copyinfo@loc.gov
www.lcweb.loc.gov/copyright

I still haven’t written what were supposed to be articles 3, 4 and 5…

At this point I would like to thank everyone who reads me and, particularly, those of you who write back. As the entire site is free, all of us contributors do this for free. The reason we do it is that it allows us to help others. And, occasionally, some of you write back and help us out. A fair trade. Some of you have also sent me songs you’ve written. I must say, we’ve a talented group here! Just one thing I’d like to mention. I’m open to constructive criticism. If you want to write to tell me I’m an idiot, don’t waste my time. If you want to write to tell me I’m an idiot BECAUSE… then please do. As long as you can back up your ideas, we can have a healthy exchange of views. Meaning, think before you write. But do write.

What this column has done for me is to help me realize what I’m doing when I put pen to paper. (Yes, I still usually use pen and paper for my songs.) As I’ve been writing songs for almost 19 years now (I hate mentioning these sort of figures, I keep believing I’ll soon start getting younger…), it’s become, not second-nature, but first-nature. I just do it. Which also means that before I started writing this column, if I was having problems, I had to spend a lot of time thinking of a way out. Now I’m paying attention to what I’m doing and taking my own advice. And every time I do something I haven’t done in a while, I notice it and it becomes next weeks subject… So Friday night my daughter was watching a movie. Although it was a “family” movie (meaning only kids will find it interesting), it had an “adult” song in it (meaning only adults would like that song). At the particular time it came on, it created a “moment” in the plot. I was suddenly reminded of some particular event in my own childhood. And realized the song was wrong. The music fitted in, but not the lyrics. Hmmm…

Obviously, we all have a past. We’ve all made mistakes, took wrong turns, had terrible, undeserved things done to us. It’s all part of the learning curve. No one can escape it. As an artist, why would you want to? Even those things that hurt the most, that are buried down deeply are part of what inspires us.

Psychologists, of course, will tell you that these things should be dealt with and forgotten. That once you’ve done that, you’ll become a “normal” person. Do you know any “normal” people? I sure don’t. Anyway, I’ve mentioned before what I think of mini-vans and suburbia…

Psychologists, in my own opinion, have their own problems that they should be dealing with… So I’ll tell you the exact opposite of what they’ll tell you: mull it over!

Now what this reminded me of was something that’s been bothering me for the past 25 years or so, but that I’d buried deep down so as not to be reminded of it. But it was still there. Remember when I said exorcise your demons? I felt like Homer Simpson and went “D’oh!” Why is it I never wrote a song about this? Put the subject to rest once and for all?

But, having had this buried down so deep, I could not have spontaneously written anything that would have worked. Remember when I said be spontaneous? It’s an art to say the opposite of something without actually contradicting yourself…

Then again, keeping this at the forefront of my mind would have seriously screwed up my weekend. So instead, I just let the whole situation play itself subconsciously, just putting in the occasional conscious thought, letting my mind do all the work.

The next day, I started getting some ideas. I was reminded of something Chief O’Brien once said. By changing a couple of words without altering the meaning, it gave me the final words of the song.

The way our mind works, these ideas pop up when you least expect them to. You’re not consciously thinking about the subject, something comes to the forefront of your mind and you immediately know what it’s about, where it goes and why.

Of course, this is a long process. It may take a week or so before you actually write the damn thing. You’ll get the urge to write it earlier, but try to avoid that. Let it come to life by itself. It’s been four days and I still haven’t written it. Although I have a good idea of the direction in which I’m heading. I’ve picked up the guitar once, played around with the keyboard a couple of times. It’s coming together, but it’s not all in place yet.

During this time, though, you can write other songs. It won’t affect what you’re doing.

It’s sort of like taming a wild beast which, to some extent, is what it is. Let it come to you. Let the song approach you, a piece at a time. So, in the end, your subconscious mind does all the work and you get all the credit (plagiarism!).

A little trick to help out: a while back I told you how songwriting can be dangerous, to avoid writing a song that will be great, but that will bother you every time you play it, twist it around a little.

First, don’t write it as a narrative. Write it as if it’s something that happened to someone else and alter little details. You were in a car accident and your father was killed, the car was a blue VW, write that Vanessa (Vanessa Williams and Vanessa-Mae are both extremely beautiful women: does it have anything to do with the name?) was in an accident, her mother died. The car was a black Toyota.

This way, you can play the song with a certain detachment and you’re still killing the beast.

So, to recap (two recaps in one column, hmmm), get your subconscious mind to mull over the exact situation, consciously make a decision to alter details that won’t affect the overall event. And mull it over.

Copyrights (again)

I just wanted to mention this for, in particular, Canadian songwriters or songwriters from other countries with backwards copyright laws. The Canadian copyright law was originally written in the later part of the nineteenth century. When records started being made, the federal government (it’s federal jurisdiction) decreed that songwriters would get 2¢ (roughly 1.5¢ US) a song per album sold. Inflation seemed to be an unknown concept. In the US and Europe, royalties are now at about $1 US per song per album sold. In Canada, after years of fighting, the artistic community finally got the federal government to update the law. Now royalties are up to 7¢ (about 5¢ US) per song per album sold.

The law is so outdated that Canada is the only developed country where you’re allowed to make copies of CDs and tapes (for your own personal use). Meaning you can buy a CD, make a copy, and sell the original back to a used CD store in perfect legality.

There is, luckily, a loophole. Royalties get paid according to the laws of the country where a song was written. Officially, a song is written in the country where it was copyrighted. Beginning to see where I’m going?

Over the past decade or so, you’ve suddenly seen Canadian songwriters who were always broke suddenly live the big life. They do this by cheating the law. Yet all is fair in love and war… Love your art war with the government.

What most Canadian songwriters have started doing is taking vacations outside the country once a year. Once you’re in a country that has copyright laws that respect the artist, you wait a week or two and apply for copyrights in that country. So you bring with you every song you’ve written since your last visit and copyright all of them together at the same time.

It may get tricky, you may be asked why it is that you’ve suddenly written 27 songs over the past week… Tell them you find their country very inspiring. In most cases it won’t be a problem. France in particular has a very loose policy for copyrighting Canadian songs. They know you didn’t write any songs while you were there, but also despise the exploitation of artists by the Canadian government.

Just don’t tell them I sent you…

Why protect your songs even if you’re just playing them in your basement?

History lesson. Gutenberg is known for having invented the printing press. What is less known is that, two days later, two more printing presses were invented. Two weeks later, at least a dozen were invented. They all worked on the same basic principles, but had been developed independently without the inventors even knowing that somebody else was working at the same invention. Bell invented the telephone. Actually, he’s credited for this invention because he registered his patent a couple of hours before somebody else (sorry, but I forget his name) who had come up with the same invention. What it all means is that both the printing press and the telephone were ideas whose time had come.

Now, and some people will disagree with this, Art is a branch of Science. The difference is that there are no specific rules, it’s more complicated to grasp. But any society evolving without either art or science can’t go very far.

A great example of this is the year 1969. In the UK, bands were working independently to come up with a new style of music. The Beatles revolutionized the music scene with Sergent Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The Moody Blues were original, but still hadn’t come up with the next revolution. Pink Floyd, Yes, Genesis, Van der Graaf Generator, Procul Harum were all working towards a new style of music, but none of them were able to fully make it. Then King Crimson came out with the revolution. All these bands followed and Progressive Rock was born. Listen to Pink Floyd, Genesis or Yes in 1969 and 1970, you’ll denote a huge difference in their styles.

As I’ve told you before, as David Hodge has told you, there’s only a limited amount of notes and chords. Nothing you can think of has never been done.

So, maybe this song you just wrote will be written by somebody else tomorrow. I’ve seen it happen to myself. A song I never protected came out a couple of years later by somebody else. The lyrics are different, but tell a very similar story (the melody is appropriate for this theme, so it’s not very surprising). Musically, it’s almost identical. Enough so that if I recorded it, I would be sued., even though I did write it before they did. I would also lose because I didn’t protect the song at the time and cannot prove that I wrote it first.

Of course, even if I had protected it, I could not sue them either, because there is no way they could have heard my song as I never performed it for anyone.

Some people steal songs

It’s unfortunate, but some people are dishonest. Others will steal a song without realizing it. Take the case on one George Harrison. On his first solo album was a song that’s become a classic: My Sweet Lord. However, that song was plagiarized from a sixties song called He’s So Fine. In court, Harrison admitted to stealing it, but without realizing he did it. I won’t go in to the details of the case as it’s still not wholly resolved and it’s very long, but you can read the details here (My Sweet Lord Legal Controversy). So if an ex-Beatle can do it, anyone can.

Not convinced? Vanilla Ice had a big hit a few years ago (not being a fan, I neither remember nor care about the title). Suffice it to say that the instrumental section, which was repeated several times, was directly taken from David Bowie and Queen’s Under Pressure. That one was a lot of fun considering that Vanilla Ice, David Bowie and Queen were all on the same record label…

Suppose you’re playing in a band and you come up with a great song, reminiscent of an ex-girlfriend’s charms: “Rosemarie’s Sillicon Valley”. The band, as a whole, works out the arrangements. Two years later, the band has split up and Jimbo, the bass player, is now playing with “The Fabulous Golden Curves”. They signed up with a major recording label and you turn on the radio to hear them play “Rosie’s Silly Cone Valley”. Of course, that’s your song. It’s number one in the charts and making a lot of money. Obviously you want to sue. First, though, you call up Jimbo and remind him of who wrote the song. Jimbo answers that he had the original idea and that the band reworked it. Then he reworked it some more, enough to call it his own. He might be telling the truth as far as he remembers it. Or he could be lying. Doesn’t matter, it’s still plagiarism. It’s your song, the fame and money from it should be yours. You can’t sue if you can’t prove you wrote it. A judge won’t take your word for it. Especially if the other guy’s backed by a major recording label.

And if you start making a lot of noise without concrete proof, you can kiss any hope of a career good-bye. You’ll be labeled a troublemaker and no one will ever want to sign you after that.

The basics

Different countries have different copyright laws, but essentially the basics are the same. (Except for Canada where the copyright law pre-dates the discovery of the country… Seriously though, it pre-dates the Stone Age.) Your first step when you write a song is to protect it the instant it is written. That means write it down on paper: Words and chords if you don’t read music. If you’re using any unusual chords or using a chord differently than it’s standard notation, write that down at the beginning. For example: Em: X02104. On the bottom, write down the international standard copyright symbol © (Alt-0169) on a PC), followed by your name, the year and your address. Make a copy and mail it to yourself. When you receive it in the mail, file it away. A good idea is to rent a safe deposit box in a bank. If your house burns down, your songs will still be protected.

Never ever open that envelope. Let the judge open it in a plagiarism suit. The moment the seal is opened, your protection is gone.

To protect it even more (and you can do this the first time around), play and sing your song into a tape recorder. Mail the cassette to yourself. However, make sure to include the paper version as cassettes can become de-magnetized over a period of time. If you have a CD burner at home, put the song on a CD instead. It gets expensive, but it’s absolutely necessary.

Never ever open that envelope

Never put more than one song per envelope. Through your career, you may have to sue more than once (unlikely, but it may happen). Or you may get sued more than once. If you have five songs on a cassette in a sealed envelope and you have to sue for one of them, once a judge opens the envelope that’s it for the other four songs. As they’re not part of the case, the judge won’t take the time to listen to them. If you ever have to sue for any of the other songs on that tape, you have no more protection.

Always remember that it’s better to be paranoid about copyrights rather than to take them lightly.

Who’s the actual songwriter?

When writing with other people or bringing songs into a band context, there are several ways of sharing the credit.

Usually, credits are split 50-50 between music and lyrics. If you compose the music by yourself, but write the lyrics with someone else, you should get 75% of the credit of the song (50% for the music and 25% for the lyrics). The best thing to do is to come to an understanding before you write the songs. It’s not always possible, but it can cause a lot of problems in the long run if you don’t. I’ve seen the case of a band on the verge of signing a record deal. The guitarist was solely credited for the prominent track on the album although the lyrics and part of the music had been redone by the singer. During the negotiations stage, the guitarist “lent” the song to another rising singer. This caused such a feud between the guitarist and the singer that the band broke up instead of signing a contract. It wasn’t too smart of the guitarist to do this, if you ask me. But that situation could have been avoided from the start.

In another case, lyricist Pete Sinfield complained, a few years ago, that Emerson, Lake & Palmer had taken advantage of him in the seventies. His complaint was to the effect that he only received 25% of the royalties for the songs he had written for them. Well, he didn’t write the music on any of the songs and co-wrote his lyrics with Greg Lake. He had signed a contract upfront agreeing to these terms. He was payed his dues. Don’t know what he was complaining about, particularly considering the fact that he wrote with them for six years…

You can always come to other agreements, as long as everyone is happy. If you look at most of the Beatles songs, you’ll see “written by Lennon-McCartney”. The truth is that they co-wrote only about five percent of those songs. Lennon wrote about 15% by himself and McCartney wrote all the others by himself. They had agreed, from the start, to put both there names on all of their songs regardless of who wrote them in order to simplify matters and to put the good of the band ahead of everything else. It worked fine for them, they never had any disagreements over this.

On Yes’ Relayer album, the song Gates of Delirium was entirely written by Jon Anderson. The arrangements were from everyone in the band and it was credited to the band rather than Anderson. This was through mutual consent.

In other cases however, it’s not as clear cut. The particular country involved might have specifics in its copyright law that you should know about. I remember an interview in the early or mid-80’s with Eric Bloom, singer for Blue Oyster Cult. He was saying that the whole credit thing was out-of-hand. If your song said, for example, “into the night sky” and the producer strongly urged you to say “in the dark sky”, you had to give him a songwriting credit if you did change that one word, therefore share the royalties with him. If you look at the credits on most of Blue Oyster Cult’s albums, you’ll find the producer’s name is often there.

Wrap-up

The first thing you want to do is familiarize yourself with your country’s copyright law. You don’t need to study it for hours or learn it by heart, just get the gist of it. Then you’ll want to look up other organizations that are in place to help songwriters. Following, you’ll find a series of links which Paul will also add to the links section of this site. Obviously, this is not an exhaustive list. If you find any more sights, please email them to Paul who’ll gladly add them.

As usual, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to email me.

I do not vouch for any of the following sites, except for SOCAN. Use these as starting points only.

• SOCAN (this is a Canadian organization for songwriters, but the advice they give for protecting your songs is universal)
• The Copyright Licensing Agency (U.K.)
• Canadian Intellectual Property Office – Copyrights (Industry Canada)
• Copyright Agency Limited (Australia)