Hi - Writerlooking For Music

[justsoulin]

Hi Everyone

I've just found you all (which I think is a good thing lol) and hope to be able to pursue my dream of creating with someone, great songs.

I've been writing (for myself) off and on for some twenty years and recently became very active again and want to open the door of my words of creativity to an audience that, hopefully through my words, will gain something from them - reflection, understanding, reaction etc etc.

Please get in touch with me (pm me) if you would like to discuss any collaboration.

Thanks All

[john]

hi and welcome to Songstuff!

[justsoulin]

Thanks John, gonna take a while to read thru the whole forum, but I want to get something moving. Can I ask you here please, as a noob, has anything/lyrics posted on the board ever been reused/copied by another member or guest to your knowledge? Is the posting of any lyrics here considered "copyright" (based on original material)?

[john]

hey

Yes, about 16 months ago a member copied lyrics and then posted them here as their own... they were banned. Another writer repeatedly posted Mariah Carey's lyrics as their own under a few different log ins and they were banned also. Banned means that they also cannot even view the boards.

On "is it copyright", by posting a lyric or any other work here it is considered published, it has a time and date stamp... in that so much it establishes copyright. In the eyes of the US it is not as strong a claim as registering copyright with their copyright office, however even that only establishes a claim to own copyright on a particular date. So, for all posting on Songstuff does establish a copyright claim I would urge members to still continue on and register their finished works with the US copyright office (you can find a link in the Songstuff music business links), wether they are a US citizen or not. The fact is much of the internet is governed by US laws.

As a general point you can never have enough evidence that you authored your lyrics or wrote your song, but no matter how big a star you are, as soon as you or anyone else makes your music public you run the risk that someone will copy it. The same is true of playing your songs in a bar. On balance it comes down to what you get versus the cost and risk. If you never let anyone see or hear your songs, no one will know them. Even opening up to collaboration you are showing your work to another writer. If you keep the song completely to yourself until you publish it there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop someone intent on stealing your song... unless you leave them on a shelf gathering dust.

What you can do however is take someone to task that a song is indeed yours, publicly and in the courts. For that you need as much evidence as you can muster. To that end few fans will remain so if they learn an artist or writer has stolen their work, they would lose respect, lose music partners and co-writers, and possibly a lot of money.

If you discover someone else has published your work without authorization, or in fact represents your work as their own you can contact forums owners and direct them to the original thread in Songstuff and by far the majority of forums owners will remove the offending content. You can also post there directing people to view your original work (bear in mind they can see how you developed the lyric, not just that you posted a completed work (almost all lyrics going through critique will change to some degree), that would surely ruin their online reputation. I say online mainly because in my experience on a number of boards, people most likely to lift a lyric and represent it as their own are trying to get praise on other boards, not because they plan to sell the song commercially.

Make sure you include the copyright statement when you post your lyrics for review and all your iterations.

Lastly, on a technical point, when you post to Songstuff you are covered also by our Songstuff's rights and by the fact that on submission you are effectively asserting that you have rights and ownership of the posted work... ie you are making a statement. By the addition of the copyright statement you are also effectively stating the same.

I hope this helps.

Cheers

John

[justsoulin]

John, that is excellent, fantastic and very comforting to know.

If I may, I would like to ask you to sticky your comments somewhere within the forum as it offers such good advice to all (since artists are not known to be lawyers albeit a few lawyers could be called con-artists lol).

Thank you very much for spending the time writing out your reply.

[Retrosaurus Rex]

Hi justsoulin,

Don't know where John ran off to, but there is some good info in the Business section, here are some links to get you started...

There's also a detailed article by Lazz you can search out if you want a lot of detail & history...

Oh yeah, welcome to SongStuff and good luck!

[john]

hey sorry i got lost lol

thanks Andrew for pulling up those links.

i'll review what i posted and update the advice for posters. Glad it was of help.

Cheers

john

[justsoulin]

Thx guys, will look