Registering in the USA?

[fred]

Hello, my name is Fred , I'm from Spain and live in Barcelona.
So far I have registered all my songs in Spain, at the local copyright office.
Since I'll be submitting my songs through Taxi, can anyone tell me if there is any benefit in also registering my songs in the USA Copyright Office?
I'm also member of a PRO in Spain. Would be any benefit for me to join a PRO in USA?
Thanks,

[Kolstad]

Hi Fred,
I'm also in EU (Denmark), and have made inquiries into the same questions you pose.

What I found out is that your work is always copyrighted by default due to the Berne Convention. This also includes the US, so the special case for registering work with the US copyright office is if you get in trouble and need legal assistance in the US. US lawyers require your work to be registered at the copyright office in order to file a case for you. However, this would be an extremely unlikely scenario for tv/film music, and you would probably want to use Spanish legal assistance in that case anyway, so you probably won't gain anything from registering your work in the US.

If you are with SGAE I hope they have recovered from the Scandal in 2011? http://www.eleconomista.es/empresas-fin ... -Neri.html

If they are like my PRO, KODA, in DK, SGAE will probably associate with ASCAP in the US by default. However in DK I can choose if I want my PRO to associate with BMI instead, but the PRO's are connected internationally, so you don't need to become a member in the US. Some Taxi members have reported that they have chosen to do so, in order to speed up the time for royalties, get cue sheets, ect., but I'm not sure if they actually have gained from it. Maybe they will chime in here..

[fred]

Thank you very much Kolstad. Your experience and reflections are very useful to me.
Based on that I think that for the moment I'll save myself all the trouble and time to register in USA.
Thanks again.

[AmandaJane]

Hello Fred

I am registered with IMRO in Ireland and they are affiliated with ASCAP in the USA. The system works fine for me, it just means being a little patient about getting those royalties from the USA. My songs are played in many countries on TV shows etc, and so I have to wait for the royalties to go from say, Finland to USA to Ireland to ME !

Write Submit Forget Repeat ! Works well lol