Does anybody know a trustable organization to register lyrics copyrights?

musicwoman · October 25, 2016, 10:31am

I found this website

but have no clue if it is a trustable organization or a scam…?

Does anybody know? Or can advise me a trustable organization?

Thanks

aerozol · October 25, 2016, 9:58pm

Hey Anita,

MusicBrainz is open source, and most of the committed users here aren’t big fans of copyright!
Freso already posted this in another thread:

Have this idea about scores and lyrics, what do you think of it?

To quote Cory Doctorow (who also happens to be a MetaBrainz board member!):

Now, onto the artistic case. It’s the twenty-first century. Copying stuff is never, ever going to get any harder than it is today (or if it does, it’ll be because civilization has collapsed, at which point we’ll have other problems). Hard drives aren’t going to get bulkier, more expensive, or less capacious. Networks won’t get slower or harder to access. If you’re not making art with the intention of having it copied, you’re not really making art for the twenty-first century. There’s something charming about making work you don’t want to be copied, in the same way that it’s nice to go to a Pioneer Village and see the olde-timey blacksmith shoeing a horse at his traditional forge. But it’s hardly, you know, contemporary. I’m a science fiction writer. It’s my job to write about the future (on a good day) or at least the present. Art that’s not supposed to be copied is from the past.

(From the preamble to his novel “Little Brother” (available for free on his website).)

That said, I think you don’t have to worry too much about the copyright anyway, it should automatically apply.
Here’s a NZ site with some useful information:

And a US one that says pretty much the same thing:
http://info.legalzoom.com/copyright-lyrics-free-20503.html

As far as I can tell ‘Songrite’ simply stores your songs/lyrics so that you have proof that you’ve written them at a specific date. Uploading your song and lyrics to Bandcamp does exactly the same thing - that website has a time stamp of when you uploaded the music too.

If you want to go really official, this seems to be the way to do it in the US:

Registering a copyright with the USCO costs $35, as of 2011. However, for this fee you can register any number of lyrics, as long as they were all written by the same person.

Which probably seems like your best, ‘most official’ way. Probably not that complicated either:

ASCAP or BMI do kind of similar things, registering your music, but they also control royalties/radio play etc for you.
I’ve just googled this now, but this seems like an interesting post:

Enjoy going down that endless rabbit hole!
Anyway, personally I would either relax and just leave it, or do it in the most direct way possible (go directly to the USCO, or your local equivalent - NZ has some very helpful govt offices that I would call over here, you might do so too).

musicwoman · October 26, 2016, 8:06am

Thank you so much Simon @aerozol for your suggestions! And for your quote that I don’t have to worry too much about the copyrights.

I was worried about the copyrights, suppose another artist likes my lyrics and use them for his song and then claims them as his own lyrics, that was my problem, therefore I wanted to officially register them, to prove that I had written the lyrics earlier. But I did not realize, that in fact my lyrics already were registered months ago when I sent them to the manufacturer of my CD and Lyrics Book

internetofdata · December 16, 2017, 10:49pm

I know that this thread has been dead for like forever but I’ve actually had a huge interest in copyright in the past(due to me being very much interested in free software and free cultural works, music mostly) and I’ve come across the

I’ve probably brought that topic up countless times for tens of different reasons(cause I want to share my interest of my copyright to friends, that’s why. Recently I co-wrote a poem with a friend and I had to bring that article up cause my friend asked if everybody can’t share it already and of course not and that’s “thanks” to this wonderful international law from 1886)

In short, your works(as long as they are eligible for copyright that is and that’s another topic about eligibility and originality which are explained on the Wikipedia page on copyright that I link to) are all under copyright already.