How to Copyright Original Music

Many people think that copyrighting something involves a long, official legal process. It doesn't, under international conventions anything you create is subject to copyright and protected whether you explicitly state so or not.


Although copyright is your automatic right. It is often wise to include a copyright notice on your work. This will announce the fact that copyright exists, and hopefully deter any copyright infringement.

Steps

  1. Image titled Copyright Original Music Step 1
    1
    The copyright notice consist of the following parts:
  2. Image titled Copyright Original Music Step 2
    2
    The word 'copyright'
  3. Image titled Copyright Original Music Step 3
    3
    The year of publication
  4. Image titled Copyright Original Music Step 4
    4
    ('publication' here means when the work was first made available to the public in some manner - this does not have to be via a publishing company - it could simply be when you published it - i.e. online, or on a demo CD.)
  5. Image titled Copyright Original Music Step 5
    5
    The copyright symbol.
  6. Image titled Copyright Original Music Step 6
    6
    The name of the copyright owner.

Tips

  • Further reading: The UK Copyright Service provide a useful copyright notice fact sheet with more detail and advice.
  • Familiarize yourself with the myths of copyrights.
  • The copyright notice should appear on every separate part of the work. i.e. for a music CD work, it should appear on the inlay card/booklet and the CD itself.

Article Info

Categories: Music Techniques