As I work with more and more songwriters, I get asked this question:
"How do I copyright my music, for real?"
That's a good question and I do think it is important because it will raise the professionality of you as a songwriter (or band). Even in today's ecosystem, you still do need to officially copyright your songs and register them with the United States government.
I was recently helping one of my songwriters copyright her songs and I decided to document the process and post it for anyone else that is considering the same thing.
THE PROCESS OF COPYRIGHTING YOUR MUSIC
1. Go to www.copyright.gov This is official site of the United States Copyright Office.
2. Log in or you can find out more about copyrighting your music
3. If you are a new user you will need to sign up with your email address. Then register your new song(s).
4. To submit more than one song at a time (which is what I suggest) choose no for the first box here.
5. Choose the type of work and start to input song information.
6. Enter the details on the work.
7. Add the author information.
8.
9. If you have any sampled music you would put that info here. Since the song recorded here was orignal we did not need to fill this out in any way.
10. If you are working with an organization that represtents you then you would put that information here.
11. Add your contact info here.
12. If you need to have this process expidited then you would tell them why here. We didn't.
13. Certify that you have authority to be submitting these songs.
14. Review the details of the whole submission.
15. Now you will have to pay: $55
16. Now choose the songs to upload. MP3 of the final masters is what we choose.
This may be a boring post for some. But I hope that anyone else looking to copyright their music will find this guide helpful. Please post any comments or additions that I have missed out below. Continue to make good music!