Expert: Rob Evans - 8/19/2005

Question
hello Rob,
My band is just finishing up our self-produced and I was
wondering how I would go about getting the songs copyrighted.  
Also, we have a cover of a Beatles song we recorded and I was
wondering how I would go about getting permission to use it.  
We do not intend on making any more than 400 copies of the
cd, we are an independent band and we do not intend on
making any measurable profit from our cds.  Thank you for your
help! -Matthew Robidoux

Answer
Copyrights vary from country to country, so it what you have to do depends very much on where you live. In the UK, true copyright exists in essence as soon as you have written a song. The secret is proving that you wrote it. This is usually done based on the proof of when you wrote it. I have always used the method of sending a copy of the material you want coprighted to yourself, by registered post. (A postal service where the date and time of postage and delivery is recorded for proof. When you receive the package, you leave it unopened and store it somewhere safe. In the event that someone questions when you wrote a song, you take the package into a court of law to be opened there and the courts can get the delivery information from the post office. This is all you can do as a unsigned band/musician, but it does work for other things as well, such as books etc. If you are signed to a record company, they use people like the "Mechanical Copyrights Protection Agency" who register everything and claim all royalties. As far as the Beatles track is concerned, you would have to approach the owner of the material and agree to pay them a royalty for every time it is played and every time you sell a copy. This gets very expensive indeed.
Hope this helps
Rob