One of the things highest on the list of many songwriters’ and musicians’ list of priorities is the protection of their musical work from potential thieves. Many musicians think that whenever they finish writing a song, or even when they have their main ideas worked-out, that they need to immediately go out and get their work copyrighted. While making sure you’ve properly protected your hard work and energy is definitely something every musician and songwriter should take seriously, it is certainly a subject on which you should not spend too many sleepless nights.
In the US, original works are pretty much copyrighted automatically just by the mere fact that your created it. It’s the proving that you were the creator in the first place that’s the hard part. Of course getting your music officially copyrighted before some thief pulls the rug out from under you is the most effective option, but there are other steps you can take to prove you are the creative source for a given musical composition.
Send Yourself a Copy Certified Mail
The easiest way I’ve heard to prove that you were the one who first came up with an idea is to mail yourself a copy certified mail. When you do this, you have proof certified by the Federal Government that you had a copy of the music you created on the day the mail gets delivered to you. But don’t go opening the letter because then all you’ll have proof of is that you sent yourself a letter. Mail the music to yourself certified and then hide away the unopened package or envelope. If you make it big and some thief has stolen your music in the past, or if some big rock star somehow starts playing your music while your still trying to get signed, you’ll have proof that you were the first to come up with that special lick or melody.
Establish a Strong Web Presence
It doesn’t matter how far along you are in your career as a musician – one of the best ways to build up the fact that you are the creator of your original work is to establish a strong presence on the Web. This might go against many of your instincts when it comes to protecting your work, but believe me, nothing says “That is mine!” like online word of mouth. Put together a Myspace page or even your own personal domain/website and make your music available for download. Make it clear that while you offer the music for free-download, the creative rights are yours and it may not be used without your express permission. The value of letting others download your music for free and listen to it over and over is of much greater value than the pennies you might make from people willing to pay for a download of a band of whom they’ve never heard.
Once you’ve established yourself on the web, people will begin to use your name or the name of your band as search terms on Google or Yahoo. Having your website at the top of the list for a given song or for your band’s name is a pretty good deterrent for any of those would-be thieves who are looking to steal other artists’ music for their own commercial gain. Establishing a strong web presence early on will pay in dividends as people start to show up to your gigs and possibly buy your CD’s after hearing your stuff online.
Embed Audio Watermarks
This is kind of a techie move, but once you have your music ready for recording, creating an embedded audio watermark is a novel way of protecting your music form potential thieves. Just like you’ve seen on all those photo websites that want to protect against people using their photos without permission, the computer geniuses out there have come up with new and innovative approaches to adding frequencies that are imperceptible to the human ear. Granted this approach is only valuable to those who have their music ready for the production phase, but it is still a promising technique to help artists get compensated for music that is rightfully their original work.
Microsoft has a free downloadable program that will add digital audio watermarks to your music files. Here you can read a quick rundown of the whole system.
I heard a story about guy who turned on the radio one day and heard a new band playing a song his band had been working to get published by the major labels. That happened in the 60s, but if you browse around you’ll find plenty of similar examples - usually someone lifting a hook or riff of some sort. A lot of these cases end up in the courts and hopefully you don’t have to experience this in your career. The bottom line is that as long as your music is out there for others to experience, you really have no absolute control over how it is used. Just relax and be grateful that people enjoy your music and want to listen.
