First, let me just say that nothing in this article is meant to substitute legal advice. This article is meant to summarize the endless jargon that exists which one has to sift through to find out how to copyright a song.

There are number of reasons why you need to copyright your song, but the one that matters most will become apparent to you when you are sitting in a court room trying to prove the song is yours. You'll also be sitting there an awfully long time because you must have your work copyrighted before you can file suit! What's more, you'll only be able to collect actual damages and profits if your song was not copyrighted before the damages occurred. Attorney fees and statutory damages will not be awarded for works that were not registered with the US Copyright Office before the damages occurred. But you already knew that didn't you!

Even though your work is copyrighted the moment you write it, you still need to take measures to protect yourself. The US Copyright Office states that a copyright is "an incident of the process of authorship". This is true in all cases unless you have signed a contract as work-for-hire that specifically states that your employer will own your creations.

Without a copyright certificate from the US Copyright office, it is upon you to prove when and if you wrote the song. You may have heard of the poor man's copyright. No deal. It doesn't hold water. If you are writing songs for pleasure or you know you will never show them to anyone, then you don't need to worry about copyrighting them, but if you plan on recording them or showing them around, take the time to copyright your song.

Don't worry about someone infringing on the title of your song. You can not copyright a title.

The first step in obtaining an official US copyright for your song is getting the forms from the US Copyright Office. You may download the forms from the Internet or you can request that copies be mailed to you. You will need Form PA for a song and Form SR for sound recordings.

Web site:

If you want to download the forms from the Internet, you will need Adobe Acrobat which is a special program to view the forms. It is not as difficult as it seems to download things, so if this is your first time to download anything, give it a shot. It really is simple and it will save you loads of time. Here are the instructions on how do download and install Acrobat. It is almost automatic.

Make sure you download Acrobat before you click on the following download links. They are in PDF format. When you click the link, you will either be asked by your computer to save the file (choose your desktop or C:\ so you can find it later) or your browser will automatically open the PDF file in your browser.

Short Form PA (for songs): click here to download now

Form PA with Instructions: click here to download now

Form SR (for sound recordings): click here to download now

Form SR with Instructions: click here to download now

US Copyright Office Forms for download

Address:

Register of Copyrights
Copyright Office
Library of Congress
101 Independence Avenue S. E.
Washington, DC 20559-6000
Phone: (202) 707-3000
Voice Mail: (202) 707-9100

Once you have completed the form(s) (in black ink by the way), send it in with the $20 application fee and a copy of your work. If everything is not exactly as they have specified, your application will be sent back to you. Your copyright will be in effect the day the registration office receives your properly completed application with the fee and your work and you will receive your certificate of registration in about 5 months or so.

You will soon be able to register your copyright online with CORDS which is a new system the US Copyright Office is testing for electronic registration of copyrights.

That's basically it. There are always special circumstances so double check before sending in your application, but this should get you there. And, as always, don't take my word for it. This isn't legal advice nor is it the definitive source for information so read up or call the US Copyright Office if you have any questions.

For additional information, visit the Copyright section.

Also see our article for beginning songwriters.