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Dare I Ask Advice on Protecting Original Music...

3K views 39 replies 14 participants last post by  T Gobbs 
#1 · (Edited)
... I imagine this will get messy, however, from my recent interactions with various members on this forum, it appears to be a great place to seek advice.

I prefer those answering to be seasoned musicians from working bands or having played in bands performing original music.


If you wish to skip the dramatic Bio drop down to the main question ***

Some background... I've been playing guitar very off & on for several years. I've strictly played rhythm via tabs and never learned any scales or theory. Admittedly, though I played with several groups of people, in my opinion, I never learned to play the guitar, but instead learned how to play other people's songs on a guitar. In doing so, I did develop a limited ability to write my own music. Through the years I have accumulated a lot of what I consider to be great riffs and partial songs. One of the biggest issues has been the limitation in expressing what I am hearing in my head onto the guitar and enabling me to complete pieces of music. By not understanding the patterns/scales and theory behind them, I have experienced a great deal of confusion and frustration which lead to me trying to quit music throughout my life.

Approximately 4 months ago I picked up the guitar again and noticed my ear had developed to a surprising degree. I also felt extremely inspired and wrote a bunch of new material. Over the course of 2-3 weeks, while tediously searching for the correct notes and placement, I was able to write a cool solo to one of my new songs. I was blown away as I never thought I'd be able to create and play in the lead guitar style. Admittedly, I didn't know what I was playing or why it worked/sounded so good, but wowzer!

This brought me to the decision that I would attempt to learn to play lead guitar. I attacked it like a madman... I learned the following:

- 5 Minor Pentatonic Patterns

- 7 Modes

- 3 Shapes from Harmonic Minor


Once I learned the above patterns/scales, I was able to then, "see" the fret board as a map or road system. I then went from, "butchering scales" over backing tracks to playing scales over backing tracks. Then to playing lead over backing tracks while inserting licks into these improvised leads. From playing everything in the key of G/Em to playing in any key. I realize that I have only scratched the surface and that there really is no, "Point of Arrival." I am still a novice with an infinite amount of learning ahead, but I am now at a point where I get to play in the game at a different level.

All of this has tremendously helped me in the creative and writing process and brings me to my question:


***How can I protect the original music I have?***


What is to stop me from joining or forming a band, showing them my music and having my music taken and used by others?

One experience... I know the guitarist who's band was the opening act, the headlining band came to him after the show and said, "I really like that 3rd song you played, can you show me how it goes?" My friend showed him and later went to see that band play again and the headlining band played my friend's song as their own.

I had a drummer contact me and we played together for a few weeks. In the process, he recorded everything. After a few weeks he stated he wasn't the guy for my type of music. He was a rock drummer and not a MetaL drummer.


Again, I prefer those answering to be seasoned musicians from working bands or having played in bands performing original music.


Thank you in advance.
 
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#3 ·
One experience... I know the guitarist who's band was the opening act, the headlining band came to him after the show and said, "I really like that 3rd song you played, can you show me how it goes?" My friend showed him and later went to see that band play again and the headlining band played my friend's song as their own.
Uh....you want the real answer?

Real answer is you don't. It's stupid and pretentious to think you can. There are only 12 notes in Western Harmony. And we've been using those same 12 notes for centuries. Whatever you do, it's already been done before. Multiple times.

I know a lot of people who are constantly claiming credit for shit, and it just betrays their musical ignorance.

I know a lot of people who will play something shitty and generic like.

A-444466668888
E-222244446666

And then they'll just claim it as their own invention. And it's like. Fucking really? You think that hasn't been done before in 300 years? :lol:

Once again. 12 notes. If it was honestly possible to "own" the idea of playing a C# after an E in a Melody there would be basically be a couple guys from 400-500 years+ who own all the music in the world and we would all be thieves. That's how music works. People sublimate the music they hear, often unconsciously, and it influences their own.

There are situations where it's like, "yeah, someone ripped someone else off.", but you've gotta just shrug it off. Repeat "only 12 notes" in your head as much as possible.

Most of the most famous cases of this are total jokes for anyone who knows anything about Music Theory. You can't give ownership over something like a chord progression to one band.

Personally, I would be super embarrassed if I was ever one of those dudes who got caught claiming they own a I-V-IV chord progression or something. It just makes you look ignorant.

That's how western harmony works, we are all putting shit together with the same parts.

Basically, if you want to prove someone else stole your shit, your shit better be mindblowing and incredibly intricate.

The people that think you can "own" riffs like the intro riff of Master of Puppets or the intro riff of "Cowboys From Hell" are a laugh. The first one is just a descending chromatic scale, and the second is a pentatonic scale mixed up a bit.

All the riffs like Danzig's "Snakes of Christ" and the zillion of times that riff has been used before for centuries are also funny. People bicker over who stole it from who. And it's like, that shit is pretty generic.

To prove you "own" something from a theoretical perspective, you have to prove it's musically never been done before.

I see people noodling around on the guitar all the time, and it's shit like;

A-3------3------3----
E-1-000-1-000-1----

And they say, "Oh, I own that riff".

Fastest way to lose music respect for somebody.

Basically, whenever you claim you own a musical idea, you better make sure first off you have the theory to back up your logic, and your idea better be next level, mind blowing, awesome.

I chug out impromptu thrash riffs whenever I pick up a guitar. I would be very disappointed in myself if I ever became pretentious enough to claim I "own them". Because that would mean I understand fuck all about how music works on a theoretical level.

If you want to claim you "own" a musical idea, for starters, your name better be something like Johann Sebastian Bach, or I will just laugh at you. 95% of music is too universal for anybody to claim ownership over it. You can own a conglomeration of ideas that come together. Like a combination of riffs, and melodies, and chord movement, and lyrics. Yeah. But it better be really good if you want to back that up. But owning something like a drum beat or a bassline or a thrash riff? Nope.
 
#5 ·
Uh....you want the real answer?

Real answer is you don't. It's stupid and pretentious to think you can. There are only 12 notes in Western Harmony. And we've been using those same 12 notes for centuries. Whatever you do, it's already been done before. Multiple times.

I know a lot of people who are constantly claiming credit for shit, and it just betrays their musical ignorance.

I know a lot of people who will play something shitty and generic like.

A-444466668888
E-222244446666

And then they'll just claim it as their own invention. And it's like. Fucking really? You think that hasn't been done before in 300 years? :lol:

Once again. 12 notes. If it was honestly possible to "own" the idea of playing a C# after an E in a Melody there would be basically be a couple guys from 400-500 years+ who own all the music in the world and we would all be thieves. That's how music works. People sublimate the music they hear, often unconsciously, and it influences their own.

There are situations where it's like, "yeah, someone ripped someone else off.", but you've gotta just shrug it off. Repeat "only 12 notes" in your head as much as possible.

Most of the most famous cases of this are total jokes for anyone who knows anything about Music Theory. You can't give ownership over something like a chord progression to one band.

Personally, I would be super embarrassed if I was ever one of those dudes who got caught claiming they own a I-V-IV chord progression or something. It just makes you look ignorant.

That's how western harmony works, we are all putting shit together with the same parts.

Basically, if you want to prove someone else stole your shit, your shit better be mindblowing and incredibly intricate.

The people that think you can "own" riffs like the intro riff of Master of Puppets or the intro riff of "Cowboys From Hell" are a laugh. The first one is just a descending chromatic scale, and the second is a pentatonic scale mixed up a bit.

All the riffs like Danzig's "Snakes of Christ" and the zillion of times that riff has been used before for centuries are also funny. People bicker over who stole it from who. And it's like, that shit is pretty generic.

To prove you "own" something from a theoretical perspective, you have to prove it's musically never been done before.

I see people noodling around on the guitar all the time, and it's shit like;

A-3------3------3----
E-1-000-1-000-1----

And they say, "Oh, I own that riff".

Fastest way to lose music respect for somebody.

Basically, whenever you claim you own a musical idea, you better make sure first off you have the theory to back up your logic, and your idea better be next level, mind blowing, awesome.

I chug out impromptu thrash riffs whenever I pick up a guitar. I would be very disappointed in myself if I ever became pretentious enough to claim I "own them". Because that would mean I understand fuck all about how music works on a theoretical level.

If you want to claim you "own" a musical idea, for starters, your name better be something like Johann Sebastian Bach, or I will just laugh at you. 95% of music is too universal for anybody to claim ownership over it. You can own a conglomeration of ideas that come together. Like a combination of riffs, and melodies, and chord movement, and lyrics. Yeah. But it better be really good if you want to back that up. But owning something like a drum beat or a bassline or a thrash riff? Nope.

That's my stance on all creative shit. Truly creative people don't worry about claiming ownership of ideas. Because;

A) Because most ideas are superficially different versions of archetypal concepts.
B) Creativity, by definition, isn't finite.

If someone takes my creative idea it's like, fuck it, you can have that. I'll just come up with something better. The idea a lot of artists have that everyone is born with a finite amount of creativity and you have to go around territoriality pissing over every stupid idea you have is super off putting. If you waste time you could spend creating stuff devoting energy to trying to enforce rules about who owns what idea, chances are you aren't very creative in the first place.

All the truly great artists don't go around enforcing the idea that they own something anyways, because they recognize that everything is influenced by archetypal ideas that came before it. Everything you do is influenced by other people's shit. George Lucas, for all his flaws, was very open about Star Wars being influenced by Flash Gordon and shit like that. And he knew Joseph Campbell's philosophical idea. Humans aren't capable of pure creation. You're never making something out of nothing. You are only transmuting things that already exist into different variations. No artistic creation came out of nowhere, every artistic creation owes credit to ideas that came before it.

The idea of people "creating" music like they are pulling it out of nothingness like a Christian Deity is fucking ridiculous. You are just re-arranging stuff that already exists to fit your own vision.
Thank you for your time & opinion.
 
#4 ·
That's my stance on all creative shit. Truly creative people don't worry about claiming ownership of ideas. Because;

A) Because most ideas are superficially different versions of archetypal concepts.
B) Creativity, by definition, isn't finite.

If someone takes my creative idea it's like, fuck it, you can have that. I'll just come up with something better. The idea a lot of artists have that everyone is born with a finite amount of creativity and you have to go around territoriality pissing over every stupid idea you have is super off putting. If you waste time you could spend creating stuff devoting energy to trying to enforce rules about who owns what idea, chances are you aren't very creative in the first place.

All the truly great artists don't go around enforcing the idea that they own something anyways, because they recognize that everything is influenced by archetypal ideas that came before it. Everything you do is influenced by other people's shit. George Lucas, for all his flaws, was very open about Star Wars being influenced by Flash Gordon and shit like that. And he knew Joseph Campbell's philosophical idea. Humans aren't capable of pure creation. You're never making something out of nothing. You are only transmuting things that already exist into different variations. No artistic creation came out of nowhere, every artistic creation owes credit to ideas that came before it.

The idea of people "creating" music like they are pulling it out of nothingness like a Christian Deity is fucking ridiculous. You are just re-arranging stuff that already exists to fit your own vision.
 
#6 ·
Kinda reminds me of the story of the jazz musician Freddie Keppard.

From the Wikipedia page about him:

The Original Creole Orchestra, after touring the Vaudeville circuit, gave other parts of the USA a first taste of the music that was not yet known as "jazz".[5] While playing a successful engagement in New York City in 1915 the band was offered a chance to record for the Victor Talking Machine Company. This would probably have been the first jazz recording. An often repeated story says that Keppard didn't want to record because then everyone else could "steal his stuff."[6] Another well known story is that he was so worried about being copied that he sometimes played with a handkerchief over his hand to conceal his fingering. Keppard's famous tendency to hide his fingerings during performances, however, was most likely a publicity stunt intended only to amuse the crowd. After all, a real musician would steal by ear and not by eye.[3] In any case, the recording company offered him a $25 flat fee to make a record (a fairly standard rate for non-star performers at the time), far less than he was earning on the Vaudeville circuit. His retort to this offer, according to Lawrence Gushee, was: "Twenty-Five dollars? I drink that much gin in a day!" [7]
 
#8 ·
To be fair that mentality is an anomaly in jazz, that's the only part of the jazz mentality I like, the "creativity = improvisation and adaptability", not "creativity = permanence in compositions".

I mean, most jazz sucks, and you would never catch me dead wearing a beret sipping a gin and tonic thoughtfully stroking my soul patch at a jazz club as a clarinet bleats like a dying cat in the background and some dude plays in no discernible time signature on a pair of bongos, but they are pretty good about not wasting a bunch of time pissing around deciding who owns which notes.
 
#7 ·
To put a slightly more positive spin on Greg's post...

If you've written a song and it exists in the "hey, here's this riff, and then the bridge goes like this, and then here's the chorus riff... cool, huh?" sense, then it's yours, sure, but there's not really a ton you can do. It's your idea, but it's just that, an idea.

If you've written a song, and recorded that song, and are releasing that song on an album... Then you have a much more concrete claim on the music. By default you're the copyright holder, but you may need to have some more formal way to prove the copyright. A suggestion I see a lot is to take a copy of that recording, and mail it to yourself via certified mail and then leave the package sealed, and if there's ever any question about the song being "stolen" you can have that package opened in the courtroom during the suit as evidence. I've been told this is NOT foolproof, but it seems like a pretty good first step. Beyond that you probably need a lawyer to give you better advice.

If you're thinking of starting a band and you're worried about sharing song ideas with the members of the band, well, that's a conversation you as a band really need to have at the start, whether songs will be written collectively by the band and be the band's material, whether if you present a song to the band you remain the songwriter, and what happens to the material if the band breaks up or if one or more member quits. It's good practice to have this conversation when entering into ANY relationship, and sort out what happens with joint property if the band were to be dissolved, so you're all in agreement up front while people are still on good terms, and not trying to answer these dicey questions while everyone's upset.

But, in general.... If you've been on a big songwriting kick lately and have come up with some cool stuff, first, congrats! Second, if you want to get a band off the ground using some of this material... That takes trust on your part, as well as potentially the willingness to "share" writing credit for the music, especially if songwriting starts to become a collective process. If the band breaks up and you leave and they keep playing without you and continue to gig some of the songs with riffs you came up with, well, that's one of the things you may need to risk just to get a project off the ground.

But, bigger picture... If things ever got as far as a serious fight over song ownership, that would probably end in a courtroom. And for that to be at ALL worth it, there would need to be enough money at stake to make it worth hiring lawyers. That's EXTREMELY unlikely to happen, so while yeah it'd kinda suck to lose "your riffs" to a band that kicked you out, it either 1) wouldn't matter since the music doesn't have enough economic value to be worth the cost of fighting for, or 2) if it does, and you've written some riffs that garnered enough attention to make a protracted legal fight worth considering... At that point, arguably your better bet is to leverage the fact that your writing is in enough demand that you could just go out and put another band together, and leverage the fact that you're the guitarist that such-and-such band ripped off for all the songs on their first album, and count on the fact that because writing is a skill that gets better with practice like anything else, your next batch of songs will be better than your first, and you're better off just moving on and using the reputation you've built as a great riff writer to do something even better without them.

But, at the scale most of us work, honestly it's not worth worrying about.
 
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#9 ·
If you're curious how the US legal system has looked at cases like this in the past, check out Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs.
 
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#16 ·
The 90s was the best era for legos. The space ones started getting lame post millenium. The 90s space ones were gnarly as fuck. And I'm not just saying that because I was born in the the 90s.

Some of the shit you definitely wouldn't see in today's politically correct world though. They had the whole mega racist "Imperialism is cool" theme with the royal british navy and the "savage islanders".



If Lego made that set today someone would get publicly crucified over it.
 
#17 ·
Honestly I wouldn't worry about it too much. I've been playing in bands around for a while and haven't come across anything too eggregious -- and when blatant copying does occur, people find that shit out pretty quick and do not tolerate that kind of thing at all, and the bad actors very quickly gain a negative reputation. You can't hide on the internet anymore.
 
#25 · (Edited)
Through the years I've had gear heads come over with the best gear, years of playing and couldn't write anything original to save their life. Knowledge of gear and creative ability have nothing to do with each other.

Your rating drops from 10/10 to 9.8/10 bigdave.
 
#19 ·
You could also record a track all about how your band is too hardcore to be fucked with so people don't even think about stealing your shit.

You ever wonder why nobody ripped off Pantera's "Walk"?

Yeah. It was because that song was about how Pantera was literally too tough to fuck with.

Sure, many people thought about stealing that riff. But by the time Phil Anselmo got to the part about, "Walk on home boy". They were like, fuck I better not steal this, this band is too tough.

Body Count are the undisputed masters of this.



You have to be careful not to over do it though. Axl Rose once tried to do a rap style diss track on one of the Use Your Illusion albums, and it just ended up being embarrassing.

Keep it subtle. You aren't Ice-T, so you can't be quite as glorious as that Body Count track, but you have to start off tough, and then just continually escalate throughout the song.

Start off small. The first verse is like, about how you will park on their lawn and do a sick burnout in your Camaro if they fuck with your band. The second verse escalates to like, a sternly worded letter to the homeowners associated of their neighborhood.

Verse 3 you just seriously step it up and threaten them with a hand grenade. Trust me. They aren't expecting you to step it up that quickly. You just went from a sternly worded letter to the homeowners association of their neighborhood to hand grenade. That is like. 0-60 in a fucking nano second.

If you play your cards right, they will actually think your band is so tough they will return your stolen riffs.

You ever wonder why Led Zeppelin got away with straight up ripping "Stairway to Heaven" off another band? You ever wonder why no one even remembers the name of that band?

Yeah. Because that band was a nerdy prog rock named something like Targus X, with albums titled bullshit like, "Lo, The Wizard Sweetly Sang" who had 0 songs about how they were too tough to be fucked with. They had songs about like, tribal politics of the creatures of the faerie world, so Led Zeppelin just heard their shit and was like, "Yo, we can steal this. Write some stupid fantasy bullshit about Gandalf and stuff over it. Add some vague shit about hedges. Instant hit."
 
#27 ·
We bust balls a lot and don't pull punches, which I believe is how this forum has remained 'normal' though the years as it weeds out the dillholes pretty quick.

Regarding the OP, it's not something to really be concerned about at this point. In the 20 years I've played in bands, I've ran into two situations that were relevant to this. First time was back in 2004 when we fired our singer, he moved across the state and posted all of our tunes on MySpace saying "Here's some songs I wrote and recorded." He wrote the lyrics to one of them and stood in front of a mic while my bassist and I pushed the buttons. The songs were written by primarily myself and the drummer, with all the vocal melodies and lyrics by me. We called him up and thought I don't remember exactly what happened, I can only imagine what my cocky, 22 year old mouth spout at him. He changed everything on his page to state that he was simply the singer who wrote lyrics to one song and all was well.

The last time was a few years back when I brought in a song to a band I joined, the band imploded and re-formed with a different bassist and vocalist, but same guitarist and drummer. My new band hooked them up with their first show and I bust out laughing when I heard them start playing the song I wrote. I even wrote the drum parts for that song! Their new singer was this butt-rock mix of Scott Stapp and a really shitty Sully Erna. I felt a tinge of "What the fuck? That's MY fuckin' song!" but the singer did his own thing and we're uh....very different singers and this band imploded pretty much on a set schedule and had been doing so for 16 years before I even joined it. I wasn't worried. They did have a recording of it I had done before I left the band, that was only a concern for about 2 months when they indeed, imploded.

A couple years later I re-recorded the tune and I intend on putting it on the album I'm working on. I put it up on FB and a couple of the band members Liked it, so I know they've heard it but there was no discussion of it after. They're actually playing together again with their original singer....I'm still very, very not concerned.

Actually, if you want a REALLY good laugh, here's the song. This is them with their Sully Stapp singer....oh man....I just spent 5 minutes looking for it and laughing my ass off all over again.


And this is the re-recording I did last year. I changed the intro and the first verse riff, but after 0:35, it's exactly the same music.


Worst case scenario, I get the Garageband session that I wrote the song in, it's dated. I also uploaded it and kept it private on Soundcloud, I'm sure if I HAD to, I could find more proof in my favor that I wrote it than they could. But out of 5-6 bands up and down the East coast, with many different types of people, shady and great, those are the only two issues I've ever had. If it were *that* big of a deal, you'd hear of a LOT more cases of it.

And Greg's a character. He forgets his own points in the middle of writing his posts at times and has admitted so. I imagine his keyboard strikes are equivalent to 16th notes at 220bpm and his fingers don't tire easily. It's hard to wield that kind of power and keep it under control. Once you realize that, his posts don't feel as involved as they come off as being.
 
#29 ·
I really appreciate the time you spent on your reply and sharing your experience - Thank you.

I like the upgrades you made to the song.

FWIW - I received the same guitar the guitarist in the first video is using as a Christmas gift a couple of months ago, except I have the stealth version (all black), but what I really need is that drummer's hat... then I'll be legit.
 
#31 ·
After kinda making myself feel stupid by going to and auditioning for things that took theory knowledge I took the time to go back and put names to what I knew already then filled in the rest. It made it very handy when working with others. I always found it boring to play with people that could only play a list of songs and not just jam. I have always had pretty nice gear and when my friends would ask if they could plat it I would say yes but only if you dont play covers...you can jam all you want but no covers. That usually kept them off of my stuff. Dont get me wrong, I knew a ton of songs and did that whole party band deal but I played my own stuff just as much and later on stopped learning covers all together. I wish I still lived in NJ where so many more people play, and PA is right next door. I think we'd have a blast.
 
#34 ·
I have not read all of this thread. Also, I am not a seasoned musician who has been in many bands. However, I am familiar with this issue. I have been a lawyer for 40 years. The only way that you can protect a song that you have written is to register it for copyright. You get the form, complete it and mail it with a fee to the federal Copyright Office in Washington, D.C. I went through this in 1978 and 1980. I had 36 songs that I had written, and I wanted to protect them.

When you write a song, you are the owner unless it is a "work for hire," meaning that you are an employee of a company that has hired you to write songs. However, you cannot enforce your ownership rights in court without first registering the song for copyright.

Also, registering the song for copyright establishes that you have claimed ownership of the song at the time you registered it for copyright. I'll will give an example. In 1980, I registered a song for copyright with the title, "Whiskey and Fast Women," admittedly not an original concept. However, the lyrics and music were my creation. Therefore, if I release a recording of the song and someone claims that he wrote the song in 2010, then I can tell him, "Dude, here is proof that I wrote this song before you were born."

Registering a song for copyright legally establishes your claim of ownership. Mailing a copy of the song to yourself does not.

If you have written a song, no one else can perform it, until you "publish" it, a legal term which does not have the normal meaning of the word publish. It is too complicated a legal issue to try to discuss on a forum. However, I will give you an example of songs which have NOT been published - the 36 that I wrote so many years ago. I have recordings of the songs on reel-to-reel tape, cassette tape and CDs. Every copy of the recordings has a disclaimer at the beginning saying that the songs are "not for publication."

Once a song is "published," anyone can perform the song as long as that person pays the person who wrote the song, or that person's publishing company, the "mechanical royalty," another legal term too complicated to discuss on a forum.

In summary, in order to protect your ownership of a song, the only legal way to do it is to register it for copyright. You should do so before you allow anyone else to hear it.
 
#36 ·
I have not read all of this thread. Also, I am not a seasoned musician who has been in many bands. However, I am familiar with this issue. I have been a lawyer for 40 years. The only way that you can protect a song that you have written is to register it for copyright. You get the form, complete it and mail it with a fee to the federal Copyright Office in Washington, D.C. I went through this in 1978 and 1980. I had 36 songs that I had written, and I wanted to protect them.

When you write a song, you are the owner unless it is a "work for hire," meaning that you are an employee of a company that has hired you to write songs. However, you cannot enforce your ownership rights in court without first registering the song for copyright.

Also, registering the song for copyright establishes that you have claimed ownership of the song at the time you registered it for copyright. I'll will give an example. In 1980, I registered a song for copyright with the title, "Whiskey and Fast Women," admittedly not an original concept. However, the lyrics and music were my creation. Therefore, if I release a recording of the song and someone claims that he wrote the song in 2010, then I can tell him, "Dude, here is proof that I wrote this song before you were born."

Registering a song for copyright legally establishes your claim of ownership. Mailing a copy of the song to yourself does not.

If you have written a song, no one else can perform it, until you "publish" it, a legal term which does not have the normal meaning of the word publish. It is too complicated a legal issue to try to discuss on a forum. However, I will give you an example of songs which have NOT been published - the 36 that I wrote so many years ago. I have recordings of the songs on reel-to-reel tape, cassette tape and CDs. Every copy of the recordings has a disclaimer at the beginning saying that the songs are "not for publication."

Once a song is "published," anyone can perform the song as long as that person pays the person who wrote the song, or that person's publishing company, the "mechanical royalty," another legal term too complicated to discuss on a forum.

In summary, in order to protect your ownership of a song, the only legal way to do it is to register it for copyright. You should do so before you allow anyone else to hear it.

Having now read the entire thread, I have another point to make. You never know when you are going to have an idea that turns out to be valuable.

About 10 years ago, my wife and I went to a Richie Havens concert. She was a big fan of his in the late 1960s. Among the songs that he performed was, "All Along The Watchtower." Before performing the song, Havens said that he was the one who wrote it, not Bob Dylan. He said that he, Dylan and some other people were sitting around playing various songs and comparing ideas, and he showed Dylan how to play the song. He thought no more about it until several months later Dylan performed the song as his on the album, "John Wesley Harding." Obviously, Dylan may dispute Havens' claim.
Extremely helpful. Thank you Henry.

... need I say, my wife was right...
 
#35 ·
Having now read the entire thread, I have another point to make. You never know when you are going to have an idea that turns out to be valuable.

About 10 years ago, my wife and I went to a Richie Havens concert. She was a big fan of his in the late 1960s. Among the songs that he performed was, "All Along The Watchtower." Before performing the song, Havens said that he was the one who wrote it, not Bob Dylan. He said that he, Dylan and some other people were sitting around playing various songs and comparing ideas, and he showed Dylan how to play the song. He thought no more about it until several months later Dylan performed the song as his on the album, "John Wesley Harding." Obviously, Dylan may dispute Havens' claim.
 
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