Joint Copyrights

If you have been researching how to gain a copyright for a song that you or your band has written you may have noticed that it isn't as simple as you may have originally thought. For one thing, it takes time and money to gain a copyright, but on top of that, you need more than one. The copyright most people think of when getting their song protected is the copyright for the actual words or composition of the song. This is important of course, but you will also need to obtain a copyright for the version of the song that you have written. This means for the recording. This may leave you with a little bit of confusion on who actually owns the song that you've just written.

Dealing with music and song copyrights can be really confusing, so let's start with the easy part, the actually written song. The lyrics of the song, as you probably know, can generally be found inside the CD cover of most music. This cover will also let you know if the song is copyrighted (which I'm sure it is) and who it is copyrighted by. Basically who wrote the song. This can get a little tricky because the copyright will actually be to anyone who had any part in putting together the song. That means even if someone in your band only wrote one line of a five minute song, they are a joint owner in the song. No matter what happens though, unless the copyright is sold, the band members will always own this song.

The sound recording copyright is where things get really complicated and messy. Essentially the recording of the song is going to be owned by whoever it was that paid the studio and recording fees. That said, this will need to be laid out in a contract. Normally if you have a record company pay for the studio time, they will have a part of the contract that says they own the recording of the song. Since they are the owners, copyright laws state that they have the authority and control over the recording and reproduce and sell that recording whenever they would like. They are the exclusive owners of that piece of work. If you aren't working with a recording studio, then it will be up to the band members (again, a good idea to state in a contract) who will be the owner of the particular recording. It is possible, just as with the first copyright, for each of the band members to be joint holders in the copyright as well. All of this should be decided before the band ever enters the recording studio. So be sure to talk about it with your band and record company.

It should be pretty easy to see why it is necessary for a piece of recorded music to have two different copyrights. This situation can become even more complicated however. If you write a song and obtain a copyright for it, then your record company buys your studio time to record it, they will own the copyright for that recording. However, if you leave that company and re-record your song under a different company, the copyright for that recording will now go to your new company, but the copyright for the lyrics will always remain in your possession.

The joint copyright that you will end up getting with all of the members that had a hand in writing the song can be confusing as well. As the US Copyright Law states, everyone who took part in the writing of the song, will have a joint ownership of the copyright. This joint copyright or ownership of the song is indivisible. That means that you can't divide up the ownership of a song. Even if someone wrote that one line, they have full ownership of the song. This can cause a lot of problems among band members because with each person a full owner of the song, the other members can't stop them from doing whatever it is they want to with the song as long as he/she pays the other members an equal share if it makes any money. You can see how this could cause some serious problems and there should be some kind of a contract written up between the members of the band to ensure that one person does not take free reign over the song, even though he/she would be completely within his/her rights by doing so.

Understanding the copyright laws is incredibly difficult, but having a firm base in what you are looking at is a great start. It will give you a heads up for the major situations coming up and better prepare you to take them head on.