Hypothetical songwriting legal question.

[soitainly]

After reading the Tate Music Group thread, I am asking myself at what point is copyrighting a song a must. Say a band has been writing songs together for years without any real thought of making any money at it and one member of the group takes it on himself to copyright the songs. Does that mean everyone else gets screwed.

So what if Pete Best had gone behind John, Paul, and George's back, and then claimed ownership of The Beatles songs after they made it big?

[JakeF]

Ask yourself this.

How much money does a song have to make for it to be worth hiring a lawyer to get the money out of the person.

Anyone who writes a song (lyrics in particular) technically owns a piece of the song. Publishing (lyrics) is where the money is at. The rest comes down to how effectively you can prove that you wrote the lyrics. The reason that so many legal problems can occur is the fact that it is hard to prove how much of what someone wrote and that music has a structure, which is similar between songs.

[IPYF]

There used to be this thing called poor man's copyright where you would put a copy of your work in an envelope and send it to yourself in the post. Then as long as you never opened the letter (unless in cases of dispute) the postmark served as legal proof that the content was your own.

Nowadays that's all old hat. The second you write it, then it's yours. You can only be sued for copyright infringement if it can be argued successfully that you plagiarised someone.

If it's something you're worried about then you can register the song as your own with a rights agency. In Australia ours is called APRA. I'm sure there's an equivalent where you are. The agency sorts out royalties for you and splits writing and performance royalties equally between all parties registered to the piece of music or performance.

[hsech]

I copyright all my original songs, and I joined ASCAP to help protect them. If you put your time and talent into a song then why not copyright it to protect it? You don't have to publish it to copyright it and you don't need an individual lawyer if you are a member of ASCAP or BMI.

[Music Attorney]

Originally Posted by soitainly

After reading the Tate Music Group thread, I am asking myself at what point is copyrighting a song a must. Say a band has been writing songs together for years without any real thought of making any money at it and one member of the group takes it on himself to copyright the songs. Does that mean everyone else gets screwed.

So what if Pete Best had gone behind John, Paul, and George's back, and then claimed ownership of The Beatles songs after they made it big?

Copyright registration is just prima facie evidence (i.e., creates a rebuttable presumption). It does not prove ownership. There are plenty of posts on the topic of copyright registration (by me and others). My suggestion is you take a look at the available info and let me know if you have any specific questions after that.

When people write songs together, then they are considered joint authors. This is another subject that I've covered. Take a look at what I've written and then let me know if you have additional questions.

Of course, if you are writing bass lines for the songs, then that's a whole other conversation that's been posted about ad nauseum on this website. Spoiler alert: absent very unusual circumstances, I don't think a bass line is a copyrightable contribution to the musical composition.


Best,
MA