Music Business Made Simple: How To Protect Your Original Musical Works From Copyright Infringement

by J. Scott “Skip” Rudsenske, Attorney, MusicContracts.com

There is no way to prevent someone misappropriating your musical work. Also, someone may use your work and you never know about it. Let's say I decide to practice my mad producer of tracks skills (not) and decide to take a snippet of a Kendrick Lamar recording and use it just for my own personal reasons. No one will ever know because there will have been no commercial release to track that. And even though it is an infringement that I could be sued for, if it doesn't get released then you just won't know about it. And someone in another country could steal your work and release it and you may never know about it either, unless it because a hit in the U.S. and you hear it. But don't despair, I'll give you some information on how they still might get caught.

Five things you can do to protect yourself:

  1. Register your work for copyright.

  2. Put your information in the metadata of the recording.

  3. Register your work with Shazam on Apple Music when you release the work.

  4. Register your songs with a PRO (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC) and with the Mechanical Licensing Collective.

  5. Put a copyright notice (c) Name, Date of Release on the platforms and any physical configurations you might release.

Though there's no way to prevent someone from physically using your recording if they want to misappropriate it, there are ways to protect yourself if someone does take your work and you find out about it. First, before you send your work to someone to listen to, or before you release it commercially you should register your work for copyright. The U.S. copyright laws require you to have registered your work, or attempted to register it, before you could file a lawsuit. And the person who registers the work first is presumed to be the owner. So if you wait to register your work and someone infringes it and registers it, then you have the burden to prove it's yours. Also if you register your work, and you can use the registration documentation to send to the infringer or music service or other online platform where the infringers work is to prove it's yours and ask the platform to take it down (take down notice).

To register your work you can i) hire an attorney, ii) use a service like LegalZoom or iii) try it yourself. I would never recommend trying to register it yourself the first go round. Unfortunately, the registering of a copyright became more complicated upon the introduction of the online filing system-and so it takes a little experience to do it. I usually recommend using an attorney or service the first time, see how they did it and then use the documentation they give you if you want to try it yourself. LegalZoom won't do this, but if you hire an attorney, ask them for the filing information that they completed for the registration before you hire them.

You can register your work in an unpublished form, which means you register it before you release it. Really the only time to do that is if you have created it and you are going to send it out or let people hear it before you release it. Because after you release it you have to register it again in a published form. So if you are an artist and you are planning on recording and releasing it back to back, just register it once. Plus after releasing it, you can now register your original song with one of the PROs (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC) and the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC). You will want to make sure that you put all your information in the metadata of your recording which includes your name as the owner of the recordings and writer of the songs.

Lastly, whenever you do release our work, make sure there is a copyright notice for your recordings and your songs noted somewhere on the platform or configuration your using to release your work to the public. That way if someone does intentionally take your work, you can ask for punitive damages of $150,000 per infringement and not just actual damages.

When you are the first to release your works, with your information in the metadata, the music recognition apps can begin to learn your song. You can actually submit your music to Apple Music to input into Shazam. This will really put you in the best position if there is a conflict over your work. This begins to show up with discrepancies when it comes time for organizations like your PRO or the MLC go to pay someone for their works after the music services report spins to these organizations. If there is a discrepancy, they will hold the money until things get sorted out. And when you have your meta data information, copyright notice and copyright registration, you will be in the position to claim ownership and your income to the songs, while being able to pursue and infringement case if you so choose.