Song writer credit - what counts?

[Pet Sounds]

The band called The Band dealt with this issue. Robbie Robertson wrote the melodies, chord changes and lyrics, so he got the songwriting credit. Until his dying day, Levon Helm thought the entire band should have been credited because they contributed to the arrangements. He was mistaken.

 

[Peteyboy]

Every band is entitled to hash out it's own unique agreement.

 

[JazznFunk]

Depends on egos in large part, but in my original jazz trio - where we did 3 recordings and all songs were registered with BMI - each person wrote individually and got the songwriting credit for their songs, no matter how much the rest of us contributed to the arrangement that ended up on the recording (the mechanical license pat of it). That way there is no question who gets paid for royalties for a particular song. The only exceptions were free/live improvisation pieces captured in the studio. Everyone got equal 'writing' credit on those, split 3 ways.

 

[LordRyan]

Some bands credit songwriting to all the band members for some reason even though one or two members do most of the writing. The Doors up until their last few albums credited everything to The Doors even though the actual songwriting was done by Morrison and Krieger. Another example is ZZ Top. on their first few albums the songs were mostly credited to Billy Gibbons and some co-writes with Dusty Hill or producer Bill Ham. From the fourth album on all originals were credited to all three band members when it is now known that Gibbons did the bulk of the writing. That didn't change until the Mescalero album when most songwriting credits went back to Gibbons and occasional co-writes. You can never really know the who's, what's and why's behind the scenes when it comes to songwriting credits.

 

[J Wilson]

Either it's a standing arrangement where all involved split the pie by as many hands are involved, or . . .

It's down to the writer(s) of the words and music, and you are a hired sideman: The song came first, and they could get most any one to cut the track.

That's it. Post Mortems about who did what are generally peeing contests, and pointless financially (you can end up right but broke) unless you're talking about a cut from a platinum-selling project where the risk might be worth the reward.

 

[The Expendable Clay]

This is way more information than I expected. My main experience with this subject has been bands I am familiar with.
Let's take Metallica as an example.
Lars Ulrich is a songwriter on (I think) every single song - only because he suggests arrangements. I find it a little uncommon to credit a drummer as a songwriter.
Jason Newsted was credited with only 3 - where he came up with main riffs of the song. His bass lines only didn't count.

Only using them because I am familiar with the requirements they had on being credited.

 

[FullumMusic]

This is way more information than I expected. My main experience with this subject has been bands I am familiar with.
Let's take Metallica as an example.
Lars Ulrich is a songwriter on (I think) every single song - only because he suggests arrangements. I find it a little uncommon to credit a drummer as a songwriter.
Jason Newsted was credited with only 3 - where he came up with main riffs of the song. His bass lines only didn't count.

Only using them because I am familiar with the requirements they had on being credited.

So, there's a little bit of two things going on here. What the law says is copyrightable, and who gets credit for ownership of that copyright.

The melody and lyrics are copyrightable. The person or people that create the melody & lyrics own the songwriting copyright. No other contribution to the song counts. They are the ones who can make money from the use of that copyright/copyrighted material. If someone else wants to use that melody or those lyrics needs to get permission from and pay the copyright holders.

The writer of the melody and writer of the lyrics technically own the copyrights on creation of those intellectual properties. In isolation, if you write lyrics and a melody, you have created a song and own the songwriting copyright. You can write all sorts of other elements to the song too. None of those matter. You write the melody & lyrics. You own the copyright. However, that doesn't hold up in court so to actually protect your copyrights, you have to register them to actually enforce your ownership.

By law, the arranger doesn't have a right to any portion of the copyright for the lyrics or melody. If you composed a song and hired an arranger to make an arrangement of it, they don't have claim to songwriting copyright ownership. They arranged it. Same goes for studio musicians coming up with their part from the chart while you record. Same goes for the producer and engineer. They didn't create the melody and lyrics.

However, if the writer of the melody & lyrics contractually agrees to give the arranger a portion of the songwriting ownership, they can. I don't know what kind of contracts the members of Metallica have signed with one-another, but there's probably something in there that states "Lars is in charge of doing X, Y, and Z, and will get [some percentage] of ownership of the songwriting. If you write a song for the band and we decide to record it, you must give [some percent] to Lars and [some percent] to James, otherwise we're not going to use your song." But they're not getting a copyright for the arrangement. The writer is giving a portion of their ownership of the melody and lyrics.

If there was no agreement in place superseding the sharing of ownership, Lars wouldn't have a legal right to any of it for doing arrangements.

Same thing goes for pop artists who buy songs from songwriters. The songwriter owns the song they wrote. Pop artist crosses out one word and changes it to another word and demands [some percentage] of songwriting credit knowing the songwriter will probably agree to signing over an outsized portion of their rights because if they don't, the artist will just pick another song. Meanwhile the artist now collects royalties for the copyright because they're part owner because they changed a part of the melody or lyrics.

You could even write an original song and give complete ownership of the copyright to some random person or company. It's yours to do with what you wish until ownership is transferred or split.

***again: I'm not a lawyer.

 

[Mannyinnewyork]

Melody and chord structure - that is the song. Everything else falls into the arrangement area.

 

[FullumMusic]

Melody and chord structure - that is the song. Everything else falls into the arrangement area.

You can't copyright chord structure.

 

[Mannyinnewyork]

You can't copyright chord structure.

Sure, whatever.

 

[FullumMusic]

Sure, whatever.

Spoken with the confidence of someone who never bothered to find out if they were correct.

US Copyright law 17 U.S.C. § 102(b) explicitly states Chord Progressions, Song Structure, and Arrangement are not copyrightable. They're considered musical systems and standardizations in the public domain.
That's why you can't copyright I-IV-V, or verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus, or "the blues."

But if you don't believe me, that's fine. I don't have to convince you. You can check with your music/copyright lawyer. Or try suing someone for chord structure infringement of one of your copyrighted songs. I'm sure all the chord structures of your songs have never been used before or ever again.

 

[brianrost]

if there is no existing music/chords/melody/harmony and you come up with a portion of that then you can become a partial song writer

You wrote the song if you wrote the melody, you wrote the lyrics or the real writer owes you a lot of money.

Coming up with a bass line doesn’t make you a songwriter. Just ask all the bass players who never got writing credits, starting with James Jamerson. In the jazz world, there are legendary ripoffs that cost the real writers a lot of money. A bass line is usually considered part of the arrangement which does not result in any songwriting royalties.

If you're worried about $$$$$$ for your efforts, do what REM and U2 did…all songs are credited to the band as a whole. The Doors did that until Jim Morrison and Robbie Krieger figured out they could make a lot more money if the songs were credited to the actual writers The Lennon and McCartney publishing deal was such that contractually each got a piece of the song, regardless of who actually wrote it, long after they had stopped collaborating. Lennon’s first solo single “Give Peace A Chance” has McCartney listed as co-writer. The Jagger-Richards credits on Rolling Stones records is another example of sharing the royalties. A great example of not sharing royalties is Led Zeppelin where John Paul Jones only got credited on one or two song per album.

 

[FilterFunk]

Putting the legality of it all aside for a moment...

If I wrote a big band-style pop song back in the '50s (just lyrics and a simple melody), and the great arranger Nelson Riddle was called in to flesh out to rest of the song, I'd more than willingly give him songwriting credit. As I see it, he hasn't been brought in just to add basic chords or string pads - I can do that myself - he's there to add the kind of beautiful countermelodies that I could never come up with. IMO, he's not merely arranging; he's composing.

Or take a song like the Jackson 5's "Darling Dear":


The song itself isn't all that special. But add James Jamerson's utterly beautiful bass line, and the song becomes memorable. Jamerson composed that
bass line, so he deserves songwriter credit. On the other hand, if someone contributes a basic root-note bass line or basic guitar chords to a song, that's not writing or composing.

All IMO, of course...I'm most likely wrong from a legal standpoint, and I could also be wrong from an artistic standpoint.

 

[Mannyinnewyork]

Spoken with the confidence of someone who never bothered to find out if they were correct.

US Copyright law 17 U.S.C. § 102(b) explicitly states Chord Progressions, Song Structure, and Arrangement are not copyrightable. They're considered musical systems and standardizations in the public domain.
That's why you can't copyright I-IV-V, or verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus, or "the blues."

But if you don't believe me, that's fine. I don't have to convince you. You can check with your music/copyright lawyer. Or try suing someone for chord structure infringement of one of your copyrighted songs. I'm sure all the chord structures of your songs have never been used before or ever again.

I probably shouldn’t bother responding but your condescending post is truly an indication that you are one of those people that just enjoys being confrontational. Legal issues aside, I believe that a melody can be (not always) insignificant without hearing it in the context of the underlying harmonic context. Melody and chord structure make the song as far as I am concerned. So maybe I should write “IMO” before each post I make so that people like you can move on.

Did you copyright all your songs on your SoundCloud page?

 

[Stylee Mousse]

BTW, a bass can play a melody, written by the bass player, who is credited.

It’s not the instrument, it’s the act of creating the composition that confers copyright.

 

[FullumMusic]

I probably shouldn’t bother responding but your condescending post is truly an indication that you are one of those people that just enjoys being confrontational. Legal issues aside, I believe that a melody can be (not always) insignificant without hearing it in the context of the underlying harmonic context. Melody and chord structure make the song as far as I am concerned. So maybe I should write “IMO” before each post I make so that people like you can move on.

Did you copyright all your songs on your SoundCloud page?

"Sure, whatever." was a pretty dismissive and confrontational response to my factual reply. Just matching your vibe, dude. "IMO" would be fine if it was a matter of opinion, but when it comes to matters of copyright law, opinions don't mean anything. The law does. And the OP was literally asking about copyright law and ownership sharing. IMO copyright law has fallen way behind the times and is kind of a mess right now. But that doesn't change what it is.

I own the copyrights to all the songs i wrote (Some i share with a co-writer) on my SoundCloud, as well as the 8 albums i released under other pseudonyms. Registered with my PRO also. Feel free to use any of the chord progressions or song structures i used. Those are in the public domain.

 

[Mannyinnewyork]

"Sure, whatever." was a pretty dismissive and confrontational response to my factual reply. Just matching your vibe. "IMO" would be fine if it was a matter of opinion, but when it comes to matters of copyright law, opinions don't mean anything. The law does. And the OP was literally asking about copyright law and ownership sharing. IMO copyright law has fallen way behind the times and is kind of a mess right now. But that doesn't change what it is.

I own the copyrights to all the songs i wrote (Some i share with a co-writer) on my SoundCloud, as well as the 8 albums i released under other pseudonyms. Registered with my PRO also. Feel free to use any of the chord progressions or song structures i used. Those are in the public domain.

Sure, let me know when the big bucks roll in on your unique and entertaining songs. I listened to your tracks - I probably won’t be using your “progressions” because there aren’t any.

 

[Ritter667]

In my opinion, and according to my view on music, the melody isn't more important than any other element of a song, sometimes it can even be less important, and as far as I am concerned everyone who contributes to a composition should have songwriting credits.

It's always been like this in any band or project I have been involved in.

 

[FullumMusic]

Sure, let me know when the big bucks roll in on your unique and entertaining songs. I listened to your tracks - I probably won’t be using your “progressions” because there aren’t any.

The ones on Soundcloud aren't the ones that make me money. And i'm not really trying to bring in the big bucks from my songs. Music pays my bills several times over. The music i make for me is for fun. The packed dance floors tell me the songs are doing their job.
Would love to see your royalty checks if we're playing that game.

 

[Kacey Y]

I've been on both sides of the equation of being part of a band and someone or a couple people come up with the melody and arrangement of a song and the other people fill in their parts. Being on the side of being the person who did most of the writing, I usually just credit the band, because I valued everyone's contribution and there was no big expectation of huge success and lawyers being involved. We're talking about DIY punk/metal/rock type bands that might play some regional tours and release a CD or 7" every few years and contribute to a compilation occasionally. Being on the side of being a person in the band where someone comes in with the melody and basic idea for a song and I'm just coming up with my own parts, I generally defer to how the "songwriter" wants to handle credit, unless they just have the barest bones of an idea and I am sitting there hashing out arrangements with them. I guess I'm saying I value other people's desire for ownership more than my own, maybe I should examine that lol

I know there's a long history of people in larger bands jockeying over publishing rights and wanting to have a certain number of "their songs" on a record and I can understand it, but I don't ever want to be in a creative situation where people are making power moves to ensure they get the majority share of credit to ensure a bigger share of profits. If there were members who weren't terribly invested and were just there to play the backing/side player role, then I'd split credit between whoever is actively participating in writing. I personally don't view myself as a co-writer on a song just because I played bass on the recording and nobody told me specifically what to play. Playing their chord progression/melody/arrangement and adding my embellishments doesn't feel like writing to me. When I'm writing for a band, I generally want to leave enough space for everyone to add their own flavor and not treat the other members like hired guns, because I can and do write solo music where I'm doing everything and can control every aspect. I could just hire people to play that music live if I wanted. Those feel like very different things to me.