Copyright, registration and getting paid

This is general education on US copyright law, Title 17 of the United States Code. Rules and fees change, so every number below links to the Copyright Office or the organization that sets it, checked in October 2026. Read the source before you file.

Copyright starts when the song is fixed

Under US law, copyright "exists automatically from the moment the original work of authorship is fixed," in the words of the Copyright Office's Circular 1. Fixed means captured in a form that lasts: a lyric sheet, a notebook page, a phone memo. A song you've only sung in the truck has no copyright yet. The minute you record that work tape from lesson 6, it does.

Copyright protects expression, meaning your exact words and your melody. Your idea for a song about a bank closing gets no protection, and neither do common chord progressions, stock phrases or a title on its own.

Why register at all

Registration is optional for protection. It matters if anything goes wrong. Per Circular 1:

• Suing: for a US work, you need a registration (or a refusal) before you can file an infringement suit.
• Statutory damages and attorney's fees: available only if you registered before the infringement started, or within three months after publication.
• Evidence: a registration made before or within five years of publication is prima facie evidence that the copyright is valid and the facts in it are true.

So the cheap insurance is to register before you release, or within three months after.

Two copyrights in every recording

This trips up almost every new writer. A recorded song holds two separate works (Circular 56A):

If a band records your song, you own the musical work and they own their recording. If you record your own song, you may own both.

How to register with the US Copyright Office

Registration happens online through the Copyright Office's electronic system. Paper forms PA and SR still exist, but online filing is cheaper and faster. According to Circular 50, for a song alone you choose "Work of the Performing Arts" at the start (pick wrong and you have to begin again), describe your authorship (lyrics, music, or both), pay the fee and upload a deposit. For an unpublished song, the deposit can be a complete lyric-and-music copy or a complete recording.

Fees from the Copyright Office's fee page, as of October 2026:

Money savers from Circular 56A and Circular 50:

• If you wrote the song, you're the only performer on the recording, and you own both, one Single Application can cover the song and the recording together.
• If you have a notebook of finished, unreleased songs, GRUW covers up to ten in one filing, as long as every song has the same author or authors and every author is named as a claimant. Circular 50 notes that naming a band, without naming the members who wrote the songs, isn't enough.

A note on AI-assisted songs

In its January 29, 2025 report on copyrightability, the Copyright Office concluded that prompts alone don't make you the author of AI output. Human-written material in the work stays protectable, and so do creative selection, arrangement and changes a human makes. If you used MusicStudio for a demo, your lyric is still yours; the AI-generated music is a different question. When you register a work that contains AI-generated material, the Office's March 2023 registration guidance says you must disclose it, claim only the human-authored parts, and exclude AI content that is more than de minimis. Never list an AI tool as an author.

Getting paid: PROs and The MLC

When a song is played in public (radio, a bar's speakers, a concert, many streams), the writer is owed a performance royalty. Performing rights organizations collect it. You can belong to only one at a time for your songs.

• BMI: no annual dues. BMI's joining page lists no writer fee; publishers pay a one-time fee ($175 for an individual publisher, as of October 2026). BMI requires that you not belong to any other PRO.
• ASCAP: a one-time $50 processing fee for writers, and $50 for publishers, as of October 2026.

Other US PROs include SESAC and GMR. Once you join, you register each song with your PRO, listing every co-writer and the split. Royalties for a song nobody registered sit unclaimed.

Streams and downloads in the US also generate mechanical royalties. The MLC (Mechanical Licensing Collective) collects these from streaming and download services under a blanket license and pays songwriters and publishers, including self-administered writers. Its site says joining is free.

Borrowing old tunes: check the public domain

Lesson 5 showed how protest singers set new words to old hymns. That's still fine with a tune that's in the public domain. As of January 1, 2026, musical compositions published in 1930 or earlier are in the US public domain, per Duke's Center for the Study of the Public Domain. Watch for these traps:

• Recordings follow other rules. Sound recordings run on a separate schedule; Duke reports 1925 recordings entered the public domain in 2026. An old hymn tune is free, but a specific old recording of it may not be. Learn the tune, then record your own.
• Arrangements can be newer. A 1960s arrangement of an 1890s hymn can carry its own copyright on the new parts. Work from the oldest published version you can find.

Hymnals and public domain sheet music archives usually list a tune's composer and date. Check them, and keep a note of what you found.