How to copyright your music. If you're a rapper, a music producer, or a singer-songwriter like
myself and you're worried that someone else is going to take your music, copy
it, and then make the millions that you deserve. Well, that won't happen after you
watch this video because I'm going to show you right now how to copyright your music.
Immediately, when you write a song, a copyright is formed, right away. So, if I sit down this
afternoon at my kitchen table with my acoustic guitar, a piece of paper, and a pencil and write
a song and call it “Beautiful Sunday Afternoon”. I have the copyright immediately after that
song is finished. So, I own the copyright to “Beautiful Sunday Afternoon”. Because of this
copyright I don't actually have to do anything else. However, if someone goes out and writes a
song called “Beautiful Sunday Afternoon” and it sounds exactly the same as my song
called “Beautiful Sunday Afternoon” Well, I'm gonna go up to them and say, “hey you can't use that song
because I wrote “Beautiful Sunday Afternoon” already and they're gonna ask me, “well prove it” and I won't
be able to prove it because I don't actually have an official copyright I only have my word,
my piece of paper and pencil and my memory that I did it at the kitchen table. So, this is where
things can get really tricky, and this is where it comes down to a subjective opinion on things. Let's
say you're a beginner musician and you haven't written many songs and likely the songs that you
do release won't become very famous. So, that's up to you whether you want to go and get an official
copyright or just use the copyright that you get from writing the song. On the other hand, if you're
a professional musician and the chance of your song going quite big then you want to have and
you want to make sure that you have an official copyright. So, if someone does write the same song
as you you can have the piece of paper and the official documents that says you own the copyright
and that will hold you up in court. So, if you want to make sure to have your back covered 100%
then you need to go and pay for an official copyright. If you're not worried about it and you don't
think the songs will be big then you don't have to go and pay for an official copyright you already
own the copyright that is just made up when you write the song. So, ask yourself that question if
you're okay with just owning the copyright that just exists right when you write the song or if
you want to get the official copyright. Let's say you do want to go in that direction, here's how you
can do that. There is different copyright offices in every country and you can go to the Copyright
Office in your country and get the official copyright stamp of your musical composition.
For example, I'm a Canadian singer songwriter so if I want to register the official copyright to
my music I would go to the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and I can go there and pay for
the copyright of my songs. If you're in the United States and you want to register the copyright of
your songs then you would go to copyright.gov and register your works there. If your country does not
have a Copyright Office or you would prefer to register it in a different country, that's okay.
If you're in this situation, then I would suggest going to copyright.gov and registering
your work there. Let's take a look quickly how to do that. We can go to google and type in copyright.gov
and go to the US Copyright Office. Here we want to register a copyright. We don't want to
record a document or research a certification so we want to register our copyright, so, we're gonna
click register. Then we want to go down and click this blue button login to the electronic
Copyright Office. This is where you would sign in if you are already registered or sign up if you
have not. If you are new user you can click here. For example, for me, I'm already a user so I'm going
to log in. This is what the dashboard of the copyright.gov site actually looks like you
can definitely see it is not very pretty but this is where we will register our work. So, in order
to register a work, go over to the right here, under register work, you would put likely a standard
application in fill out the required information. Upload the song so there is a reference to them
that they actually have your works, upload the lyrics, and everything else that they need for
the song. Pay the fee, and then right away you are registered officially as a copyright. So, that will
hold you up in court. Weeks will go by and then the US Copyright Office will send you a letter
in the mail with an official stamp and it looks quite official. So, keep that in your documents.
If the day does come where someone does steal your song or if someone says you stole
their song you have the copyright and you are backed up in court. I've heard other musicians
do the trick where they print a CD and then mail it to themselves and on the letter there's a time
stamp and it hasn't been opened yet. Unfortunately, that does not work as an official document.
And will not hold you up in court. This is also known as the “poor man's” type of copyright. I
am a singer/songwriter too and so feel free to check out some of my music and to subscribe to
this channel. I make videos and lessons on life as a singer-songwriter, that will hopefully help
you along the way. So, please subscribe and I hope to see you in the next video.