Prove your Ownership with a Copyright, Protect your Ownership with a Music Licence
Owning a standing copyright to music or lyrics that you created isn’t going to be enough to ensure payment for use of your work publicly. You should also consider applying a licence to your intellectual creative property to make sure you are properly compensated for your work when it is used for any public and or private gains.
Having a copyright only verifies who the original creator and owner of the written composition is. Ownership is protected as soon as the composition is recorded to a hard media. But the proper and most secure way to uphold proof the ownership is to submit the details to the copyright office and make ownership publicly official.
There are two different international agencies that monitor and uphold the bilateral copyright agreements set forth by every nation that enforces its own copyright laws. Through these organizations, polices are in place to ensure proof of composition ownership world wide.
Copyrighted material is only protected by virtue of ownership. To protect against the use of copyrighted material without express permission of the creator/owner, the material must be licenced through legally recognized licensing organizations. For instance: if a chain of hotels wants to broadcast certain music in their facilities, that chain must purchase a music licence to do so.
There is licensing methods for the complete, and vast, list of scenarios, but all are designed to protect the holder of the copyrighted material from not being compensated for use of their intellectual creations.
The legal effort needed to construct and administer equitable licensing agreements is monumental. There are agents, or groups that are in existence with the sole purpose of licensing music. Two of the largest and better known groups are ASCAP and BMI. Both groups offer blanket licences that cover the approximate 4 million strong song library each houses.
Copyrighting your musical composition will prove you own it, but a music licence will ensure you get paid when someone uses your creative property.
