Copyrights on original material

[hwoodum]

I'm a soon-to-be Taxi member again after a long lay-off. I have been viewing the livecasts and have gotten a lot of good info from them. I tried to ask this question, but they didn't choose to respond to it. As a member submitting new material, it is not practical to copyright each individual piece of music as it is completed. In general, musicians don't always have a lot of money to spend. Considering the membership fee and the charge per entry, well, it can get pretty costly to protect yourself each time you finish a piece, just in case you find an ad you want to submit to. I used to submit a whole collection to the Library of Congress and my $30, or less at the time, would cover serveral pieces of music. If we write a new piece to submit to current listings, over time that can get expensive. Does anybody have a work around for this? Should we wait until a submission has been forwarded to send it in for copyright? I'm not extremely concerned about someone stealing my material, and it might even be an honor that someone thought it good enough, but it would be nice to compensated if someone did decide to take it without permission.

Thanks for any ideas you might have. I look forward to hearing your input and to rejoining Taxi.

[Tree]

Personally I wait until I have a large group of pieces to copyright. I can't afford $35 per song either. (as a side note if you register online I believe it's cheaper). And since technically the song is copyrighted as soon as you write the song you shouldn't have to worry about it, especially if there's a record of submitting it to Taxi. But that's not legal advice, just my personal opinion. I can only hope/assume that if your song gets forwarded that Taxi is working with reputable places that aren't going to steal your song. But perhaps as soon as you get word of a forward you could copyright the batch of songs you have at that point if you're worried.

[Len911]

I can only speak for myself, but I have almost come to the conclusion that i will copyright if I get something forwarded or maybe even wait until someone actually buys a song. My money would probably better spent on submission fees, I could submit more. I've not heard
about too many people stealing songs and going on to make a fortune off it, illegally, anyway. If anyone famous stole one of my songs, I'm sure I could find one of those attorney's that take a commission to represent me, and the publicity alone would be worth it,lol! Okay I think I am dreaming now. imo it's difficult to have anyone even listen let alone steal a song. Of course I hate to see anyone losing their government job, so i wouldn't say don't do it.

[hwoodum]

Thanks Tree and Len. Good tips. I think I will just wait until something is forwarded or copyright as a collection after I build up a library. I will also check into the online filing cost.

Keep writing.