Think for example you have an album project (e.g. 12 songs with 3 singles). Therefore the following are copyrightable (which you should do to have full protection):
1.) Entire album as a sound recording project. (One application of Copyright SR)
2.) Entire collection of your songs in the album (One application of Copyright PA, take note that the copyright of sound recording is separate from the copyright of music and lyrics)
3.) Sound recording of a single (Three application of Copyright SR one for each single)
If the cost per filing is $35 (US copyright online), then the total cost of a copyright application are as follows:
$35(for album as a sound recording) + $35 (for all songs a music/lyrics) + $35x 3 (for each single as a sound recording) = $35+ $35+ $35×3= $175.
What if you decide that the sound recording is to be revised or the lyrics/melody of the song is not appropriate? This is where a lot of confusion in the copyright world starts to evolved. This implies that the copy of your work stored in your country copyright office is not the latest or the updated version. So the safest thing would be deposit again the final work and you will spend another $175 for another copyright application.
I have finalized one copyright application back in 2005 in Philippines which is a sound recording project. And the good thing is that it is an album project and all work is already done and finalized, so no revisions are to be made. Even though the Philippines copyright application does not have an online facility (where I could re-submit easily for any changes), I have done a good job in the first application.
But what about the rest where a lot of musicians are in need to have their work to be protected? This post will look into common copyright application mistakes that you should avoid. I am not an entertainment lawyer so do not take the information on this post as a legal advice.
Don’t rush for Copyright Registration without finalizing your work
The common advice is to immediately register copyright after completing the work. This is both a good and a bad advice. It is good in the sense that it protects your work immediately. It is bad because most likely your work is still not yet finalized. There are still a lot of changes to be introduced to your song or recording project during the tracking and even in the mixing process.
If you register a lot of unfinalized work, you will be incurring a high cost of copyright application and this makes it harder for you to manage all of your copyrights. Unless of course if the copyright budget is not an issue and you can submit as many copyright application as you want.
If there is a need to publish the unfinalized work (such as in your personal blog), make sure you have some evidence that you created the work first. I will not go in detail but there is a lot of creative ways you can do this in your own. For example, make sure you kept a copy of your song writing cassette tapes, hard drives and other physical evidence containing your originally work. The most important information is the date of creation. Some would place the cassette tapes in the mailing envelope and then send it to yourself. The date stamped by the post office can serve as the date of creation.
Poor man copyright
The trick is to never open these envelopes containing the cassette tapes or other storage devices with your song or recording.
So when is the proper time to submit the material for copyright? I think:
a.) The lyrics and music are final when the song is already mixed and schedule for professional mastering (which also have a scheduled release date like in an indie or major label album projects). If there is no release date, it is not yet final. So don’t’ official register it for copyright because it can still be subjected to a lot of changes.
Bear in mind that if the song or album will be scheduled for release and the song has been mixed completely; there is no going back to revise the lyrics/music; otherwise the affected projects would be re-recorded.
b.) The sound recording is final after mastering process.
In most cases, like an independent album project, you would be submitting two copies for copyright application, one for copyright SR (sound recording, assuming you record and produced the album) and the other for PA (performing arts for music and lyrics, assuming you write all the songs or other writers are known) AFTER all songs has been recorded, mixed and mastered successfully with a scheduled date of release.
Not organizing the work versions and not tracking them in paper
As a producer that owns a lot of sound recording copyright; there are times when a certain song has a lot of sound recording versions. For example “Song X” has both the studio version and an acoustic/unplugged version. Since the sound recording is different for each version, each one of them would be registered to copyright if they are the final versions.
As your catalog songs grow in numbers, it would become hard to manage everything particularly if you made a lot of copyright registrations in the past and you made a lot of versions for each song. It makes sense to track each version in paper or simply in an Excel spreadsheet. There is no standard format, but it would look something as describe in this tutorial on how to organize your music catalog.
When will you received your US Copyright Certificate?
I submitted my first copyright application to Philippines copyright office in 2004 and it takes around one year for the copyright certificate to arrive (using snail mailing).
In year 2005, the online copyright in US is not yet fully activated. I tried submitting copyright through third party services like Click and Copyright and it took two years after that for copyright office to send the certificate from US to Philippines.
I filed another copyright application in 2008 and it was reflected immediately on their online copyright databases (max 6 months from online application, you will receive the copyright certificate which is way faster than using third party services).
The online method is of course faster, but this is not available in most countries, so realistically it would take around one year to receive the copyright certificate.
Content last updated on July 23, 2012