Songwriter? Make Sure That Your Songs on the Internet Are Properly Protected

First, a quick quiz; what 2 things do ALL these artists have in common?

– Beyonce

– Westlife

– Josh Groban

– Mariah Carey

– Prince

– Led Zeppelin

– The Rolling Stones

– Eminem

– Carole King

– Tupac

– The Flaming Lips

– George Harrison

– Cat Stevens

– Coldplay…

Answers coming up in just a minute, so stay tuned…

Think about this; as Songwriters, we write songs because… well, we simply love to write songs. Anybody who picks up a guitar or switches on a keyboard knows that the next thing you write could be a hit. It’s every songwriter’s dream to make a living just by writing songs. It can release you from the daily grind – because songwriting can give you the kind of income that lets you kiss the boss goodbye. Hasta la vista, baby. But for good.

Financial independence. Sit and write till 4am and not have set the alarm… because you can get out of bed whenever you want to. Work when you want, where you want because all your work is in your head. Hang out with musos. Live your life in a great studio full of faders, mikes, guitars, synths, drums and f/x. Play music all day and most of the night. Valhalla!

And the BIG plus is that songwriting and composing can be extremely lucrative. Just ONE successful song can hoover huge amounts of warm, comforting, hard cash into a songwriter’s bank account almost literally overnight. Assure you an ongoing, ‘residual income’ – royalties for years and years that no pension scheme can give you…

But anyway, back to the quiz..

Answer #1 – Same as you and me, all those people are Songwriters.

Answer #2 – They have ALL sued (or been sued!) for ‘Illegal Use’ over Copyright Infringement, or over Licensing Rights, or over Publishing Rights or some other legal stuff at one time or another. And that’s just a few of us. There are thousands more…

And same as you, they ALL spend a lot of time picking out D, G and A7 on a guitar or C, F and G7 on a keyboard, humming tunes and scribbling down words.

Now maybe you’re not as financially loaded as these guys (I’m not); but the fact is that in a lot of cases, they got into legal wrangles over bad advice or bad contracts – sometimes when they were starting out and sometimes, when (or because) they began to make serious money.

And when the cashboxes start to “KAA-CHI-I-I-I-ING”, you better believe that there are a LOT of people looking for a cut. In YOUR creation, in YOUR earnings.

You think the biggest earners are songwriters? Nope. The biggest earners are the Music Publishers. And don’t get me wrong – a good publisher can wring the last cent out of a song and find earnings from your work that you never knew existed.

But it used to be that ‘Song and Music Publishing’ was the exclusive territory of those all-powerful ‘Music Publishers’. And it used to be that ‘Copyright’ was something you wrote with a little ‘©’ or paid the Government for. Not any more.

Savvy songwriters and composers are using the Power of the ‘Net to self-publish their material. That way, they retain their rights to license their work for private listening, for use in ads, as ringtones, maybe film soundtrax or TV too.

Saying that, the Internet is a dangerous place to publish any copyright material – it’s so easy to ‘lift’ anything in digital form with no more than a ‘right click > copy’. Self-publishing is best practised using an Independent, ‘Third Party Witness’ who can attest and endorse the fact that you published your songs and music when and where you said you did – especially if you self-publish using social networking sites.