By Charlie Dahan

The entire business of music is based around the song and the songwriter. Without songs and people writing them, there is no intellectual property being created to put on compact disks, movies, television, radio, the internet, in elevators, etc. In order to have a business around creation, we must first turn creation or creativity into property.

When a songwriter, author or composer first conceives a song, he or she owns it from the moment they take that idea and reproduce it into a fixed form. That is you cannot own an idea that is floating around in your head. Once you record your idea onto a cassette, video, CD or simply write it down on a piece of paper, you own your creation…it is yours to now market and try and make money from it.

The problem with the songwriter stopping here in their efforts to protect their creation is that if a conflict does arise, how can you prove that you wrote this song on a certain date that predates the song that is being claimed as the first version of this song? Well you have two steps you can take, but it is recommended that you do both.

First take the cassette, CD, video or paper with you song and put it in an envelope, seal it tightly and mail it to yourself. When it arrives at your home, do not, I repeat, DO NOT open it. File the letter away in a safe place. What you have just done was to have a government agency affix a date onto your creation. When the post office ‘cancels’ the validity of your stamp, they place a red stamp that both nullifies you from using this stamp again, but in that red ink stamp is a date when this revocation happened. This is an official date placed by a government agency and this technique is called “The Poor Man’s Copyright.” However, this isn’t the end all be all protection of your creation. Many lawyers I have spoken to say that this method does not always hold up in court, but is an important step to take before you move onto what will protect you.

You need to contact the U.S. Copyright office and officially register your creation with them. You can download their forms, as well as obtain information you may need and answers to questions you may have at: http://www.loc.gov/copyright/forms/. You will have to pay a fee to file your song with them, about 35-40 dollars, but the good news is that it isn’t that much per song. You can file your works as a collection, so the title of your 15 songs you send in would be "Songs from January 2002," which are all the songs you wrote that month. You will need to keep an accurate record yourself as to which songs are in that collection, as the Library of Congress will not catalog them, just register your songs under the title of "Songs from January 2002." They will send you a certificate verifying their receipt of your music and the day they registered it. Also what you need to understand is that the Library of Congress is not going to listen to what you send them. So, they will not know if someone else may have written a song similar to what you have sent in or help you in placing or promoting it. They simply register the date they received it, so if an infringement occurs, you will have the end all be all date of record for your creation.

NEXT: Various streams of income that come from being a songwriter.

Related Article: Your Music and Intellectual Property Rights

Charlie Dahan is a professor of music business and history studies at Oneonta State College as well as a freelance A&R consultant and writer. He has been a part of over 70 commercial releases and has two Grammy nominations from his work with the Skatalites. He also owns Larchmont Recordings, a new label set to debut its first recording in the Fall of 2002.