From the course: Music Law: Managing a Band's Business

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Protecting copyrights

Protecting copyrights

From the course: Music Law: Managing a Band's Business

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Protecting copyrights

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- Once your band finishes an original song and records it, two copyrights are automatically created. A song copyright, initially owned by the songwriters, and a sound recording copyright that protects the performance of the song, and is initially owned by the band. Your band obtains the copyrights automatically. And although it is not mandatory, you can obtain additional benefits, and officially list your band as copyright owner by registering at the Copyright Office. If your band partnership owns the copyrights to all of the songs, and if the band partnership also owns the sound recording, there is a method to register both song copyrights and sound recording copyrights at one time. I explain how to do this in my course Copyrighting Your Song, and special instructions for this type of application are also available in circulars 56 and 56a from the Copyright Office website. However, separate copyright applications must be used if individual songwriters, not the band, claim authorship…

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