Music copyrights

When I was first starting out as a local musician, I never thought that it was important to copyright my music. I always assumed that music copyrights were for the big, corporate artists who had signed to major labels. Why would someone small like me require a music copyright? If anything, I wanted my songs to be copied and shared. I wanted people to use them in remixes, to trade them with friends, and to play them anytime they could. This is how small artists grow – by being having their music shared throughout the community. Music copyrights at best do nothing to stem this, and at worse, discourage people from copying CDs.

Can save you a lot of hassle

If I had gotten a copyright for music way back then, it would have saved me a lot of hassle later on. You see, you can have a music copyright that doesn’t stop people from sharing your songs. The important thing about music copyrights is that they allow you to establish ownership of the song. Otherwise, it is difficult to prove that you wrote a song if someone wants to rip it off. This is exactly what happened to me. Because I had no music copyrights, when one of my songs was stolen it was impossible for me to prove it. Although there was some evidence that I had been playing that song for a while before it came on the scene under someone else’s name, it wasn’t enough to make my case.

General Public License Copyright

Even if you want people to be able to share your songs, it is still a good idea for you to research music copyright laws. There is a thing called the general public license copyright which is perfect if you want to show authorship without limiting people’s access to your music. It allows people to freely copy, trade, and modify your song as long as they give you credit for it. Had I gotten this kind of music copy right, it would have saved me a lot of hassle and heart ache. Now I know better. I copyright my songs religiously.

Protect yourself

Just because you are concerned about intellectual property music protection does not mean that you can’t copyright your songs. No matter what rights you want people to have with your songs, there is probably a music copyright that is set up for your use. Nothing is more crushing to an artist than to have his or her work stolen. Do what you can to protect yourself against it!

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