Anyone familiar with doing this? I'm going to be having one of my songs on the radio that I recorded here at the college I'm at... but I don't want it on the radio until it's copyrighted.

I know a lot of people don't worry about it if they aren't famous yet... but I've had problems with this before when I didn't copyright my shit, lol. Is it expensive? Can be legally done online??

I googled a bit but I'm not familiar with it so I'm not sure what is trustable or not..

Here in Canada you can do it through SOCAN. I think ASCAP is the American equivalent. Not sure if this budget methood works only for audio but if you mail yourself a copy of the material and leave it in a sealed envelop, that's admissible in a court.

My buddy told me that a while ago too... but I remember someone telling me it needs to be done with a lawyer?? It won't work for written or typed lyrics, only audio?

Are you the one who really wrote "We are the World?"

don't bother unless ur famous

copyrighting is along and expensive process

This post was edited by freddykreuger666 on Apr 7 2010 05:00pm

What?...

@freddy, that's the response I don't want... I've had problems with this in the past to things I never got copyrighted... however, it wasn't lyrics, it was just a band name which is now taken by someone famous. I don't want to put anything on the radio that's not copyrighted... that's just stupid imo.

This is the worse advice you could possibly listen to, Lyricist.

The mailing method mentioned above is by no means a sure thing to prove ownership of a song. It, however, could not hurt. Take the time to record all of your songs and burn them onto a CD and mail it to yourself. Make sure when you receive this in the mail that you do not open it. If worse comes to worse and you want to use this in the court of law, it would need to be unopened. Having said that, this is still not a legally-registered copyright, and may not hold any weight in trial at all. It will however, be evidence to support you. Technically speaking, as soon as you have created a song and made into a tangible version (ie: sheet music, and/or CD, MP3 files, etc), it is copyrighted. The problem is however proving you are the owner and creator of the song.

The only 100% sure way to prove you created a song would be registering with the US copyright office. However, sending yourself a copy of songs (and not opening the package) is a cheap method if you cannot afford to officially register copyrights right now. Personally I would get it registered before it plays on the radio just to be safe. You can start here:

http://www.copyright.gov/forms/

This post was edited by PSPZorZ on Apr 7 2010 10:45pm

I know what he said was pretty much the worst advice ever... no worries, haha. The thing is, I have enough "confidence" (I guess the word is...) that if I put the song on the radio (which it's basically already lined up for air play after it's done being professionally mixed) it has full potential of being stolen... if I don't get it copy righted. I was looking through that site a little, seems like a lot but probably well worth going through with... lol.

Do you know if I submit it through the site? or will I have to talk to a copy right person face to face to get legal documents that can be held in court?

Like I said (I think ) I'm not familiar with this type of shit... so I tend to get kind of confused.

[edit] I just am worried I'll go try copy righting it completely by myself and do something wrong. That would suck.

This post was edited by Lyricist on Apr 11 2010 03:05am

Mailing method is now illegal.

To copyright a song's lyrics, you must fill out the specific song lyric sheet which you can find at www.copyright.gov/forms, I believe it might be form S (unless that's studio recordings) The fee is nominal (maybe $75 max).

Well, in the past few years I guess things have changed. Doing some quick research it doesn't seem like mailing yourself the songs will really hold up in court. Illegal though? The way you say it it sounds like you're going to get arrested to mailing yourself your songs! LoL (:

I'm not sure the exact procedure to copyrighting the songs, but you can start to read up on the copyright.gov site. Having said that, I think you would want to copyright the recording as a whole (not just the lyrics), so make sure that whatever you do, you are placing a copyright on the song, as opposed to just the lyrics.