Steve Pavey, FB, 3/28/26: I never cease to be amazed by musicians that are so confident about being wrong. On a songwriter forum, a neophyte songwriter had a very basic question: Can I post a song on social media that hasn’t been copyrighted and not have to worry about someone stealing it? Put simply, it depends.
You own your work immediately upon it’s creation. BUT if you haven’t gone through the formal copyright process [Registration] of filling out the necessary forms and submitting them with the required fee, you have a rough legal road ahead if someone else uses your song.
Here’s a couple of reasons why: First, let’s say that you write a song in a band rehearsal or studio. You even have a rough recording of it. You’re covered, right?
Not necessarily. You own the copyright to the recording. But what if someone in the hall outside the studio hears the song, runs home and grabs his guitar and records it really quickly and writes down the lyrics and chords and then files a copyright? YOU have to prove that you wrote it first and he simply copied it. That may or may not be possible, and likely won’t be easy. You may be able to present witnesses, not only to your creation of the song but also who can say they saw him outside when glancing out the window.
To expand on that, let’s say that you wrote the song in rehearsal and a year and a half later, you join another band and record the song with them. It goes viral, but you haven’t copyrighted it. The singer or sax player or guitar player from your earlier band comes forward and claims that THEY wrote it. Or they say they CO-WROTE it and you only contributed part of a verse. Now what?
When you fill out the copyright forms, there are spaces for co-writers and contributions they made to the composition. You can say you wrote 100% of the lyrics and 50 or 75% of the music. Or you can state that you own 100% of the song. If you’ve already done all that with a formal copyright application that’s been accepted by the Copyright Office, you have protections that you wouldn’t have without that formal copyright.
And the old tale that you don’t need to spend the money for a copyright; you can just record your song and send it to yourself via registered mail and not open the package – no Music Industry Attorney would advise you to do that, for a simple reason. All I’d have to argue in court was that you had a certified package sent to yourself at an earlier date, carefully steamed it open, inserted a recording and re-sealed it. Who would win that case? Maybe you. Maybe me. [Actually the law on this was changed in 1998. It is too easy now to do the whole process online.]
The safest route is to simply copyright your work.