Copyrighting Origional Music

[FCCCWorshipTeam]

Does anyone know the best way to copyright original worship music? Do you have to do one song at a time or can you bundle and who should i go through?

[mattbrady]

If you are going the "normal" route, you would actually file the paper work and send a copy of the work to the Library of Congress - Copyright office. You can file just an individual song, or a collection of songs. In my mind, the biggest difference is the cost between the two. It is much cheaper to file a collection!

You can do all of these steps yourself, and good place to start would be here: http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/.

[mikeymo1741]

Songs are copyrighted as soon as you fix them in a medium. In other words, as soon as you write them down, record them, etc... the copyright attaches.

What you are talking about is registering your copyright. And in that case, Matt is totally correct.

[FCCCWorshipTeam]

Thanks for your help. Is there anything special I need to do as far as making sure I register a collection rather than one song at a time?

[mikeymo1741]

It's part of the application. Note that you can only apply to register collections if they are 1) unpublished, or 2) were published together.