Your Opinion: Post Lyrics On Personal Website?

[JayYarbrough]

I've been posting my lyrics on my personal website for years now and have recently unpublished them because they haven't been copy written through the USA copyright office. Of course I'm concerned about theft.

In your opinion, is it enough to just include the copyright symbol and "All rights reserved" or should I leave them unpublished until I get them formally copy written?

[john]

for finished work it is always a good idea to register it. for work in progress the copyright is protected simply by publication... however if it is your own site that protection would be very very weak as you can easily manipulate timestamps such as the date of publication. for that reason i would register first. that can be done very quickly via the online registration.

posting on a forum or asite you don't own that also stores timestamps is a better form of protection than posting on your own site but not as strong as registering it. Registering it effectively notes that on a specified date you assert that you are the copyright owner by right of authorship. The copyright symbol and date make the same claim, the difference in the strength of protection is more or less the strength of belief that the date of the claim has not been tampered with. lol

neither prooves you are the creator, only that on a set date you made that claim. There are other forms and ways to corroborate your claim. For that reason all my finished and draft notes are stored in the bank.. The fact that anyone interested in prooving authorship would also do well to have draft versions etc available aids their claim... ie it can be seen to have developed not just appeared out of thin air.

That is another way that posting on our forums can help you.. the proof is stored within your lyrics topics... add that to the fact it is published... all the better.

last thing... in some places you might want to cite publication location... Songstuff also works for that.

Good news is you literally register yiur works tonight if you have ~$40

[JayYarbrough]

Great info, thank you! Yeah, money's tight right now but I'll be getting them registered officially soon enough. I may post my lyrics to the song I'm recording now.., might be interesting to see what feedback they'll receive.

Love your site, brother. I've always liked IP Board, but I digress. Thanks again.

[john]

You are very welcome. Sorry for all typos I mad that post from my phone

Oh and just to be clear that is about $40 for all your songs

Glad you like the site Jay!

[McnaughtonPark]

• How do I register all my lyrics for $40?
  

[john]

ok i wasnt completely accurate... i do not mean all the songs he will ever write.

it comes down to the rules on "collections". it is not cut and dried and there are varying conditions for previously published versus unpublished... you can even pre-register i believe. Dont take my word for it.. check it out yourself.

colections are really intended for say an album of songs or literary works published together in a book but if you have multiple works of any kind you can collect them together into a collection and submit them under the title of the collection incurring only one submission fee.

as mentioned there are criteria to be satisfied. you need to check these yourself until you are satisfied.

in this case, for multiple unpublished works that seems like a good idea. if it is a mix of published and unpublished works then true more than one application will be needed.

in an ongoing basis this could be maintained at an album level for example.

if you have an album of songs you use the online submission form and enter a title for the collection (the album title) follow the instructions (dependent on what you are submitting) and submit.

[john]

oh and it is $35

[realfanback]

Just go and register. If your webiste is not registered you will be in trouble.

[independentmusicpromotions]

I think John had excellent advice on copyrighting, to be clear, and it's never a bad idea. But if you don't mind another perspective, I think, especially if your music is already out, you should post your lyrics on your networks (Reverbnation and Bandcamp are great forums for this), and not worry about people stealing your lyrics. It's an extremely small likelihood that someone will be creeping around, reach your personal blog, and decide to nab your lyrics for their own project. 

 

For that to happen, you'd probably need an extremely high amount of site traffic and also a lot of luck, because you'd need to attract that very rare individual who does this sort of thing as part of his music business. 

 

I don't mean to come across the wrong way. I just think there are better uses of your time in promoting your music than pulling your lyrics from the net because people may steal them.