How To Copyright Music:

When copyrighting a piece of music, you should be aware that there could be more than one copyright owner to a piece of music. For example, the music alone could be original, the lyrics and the sound recording itself may all have separate copyrights.

Before protecting your music you should be sure that you have permission to use any lyrics, tunes and sound recordings that are not your original work, or that it is licensed as free to use. In order to gain permission you should contact the publisher of the work, who will be able to help you further.

If more than one person has worked on a piece of music it should be agreed before any public release of the music who owns what rights. This should be written in an agreement and signed by all involved parties.

Once you are sure the music is either original or have the permissions needed, Protect My Work can play an important roll in the protection of the music. When your music falls into the public domain it is possible that others will attempt to use the music without your permission, perhaps on television, websites, radio or other mediums.

Should anyone use your music without permission you would need to prove that you are the original author of the work in order to claim any damages or stop the work being used without your consent.

By submitting your music to Protect My Work, your music will be registered and held in our database, along with the time and date it was received. It is possible to submit any digital music file such as mp3 and wav, either by email or by logging into your account and uploading it.

For extra proof of the originality of the music, you are able to upload different versions of the work, demonstrating the different stages the music went through in reaching the final version. This can be invaluable evidence should you need it.

Protect My Work allows it’s members to upload up to 8MB in one go, either by email or upload. Members may upload up to five separate files in one go as long as the combined total of all five files is less than 8MB.

Members have the option to simply attach up to 5 attachments (totalling less that 8MB) to an email and send it to protect@protectmywork.com. This is without doubt the easiest, fastest and simplest way to register your work. After sending the email, you will receive one email in reply asking you confirm. Once confirmed, you will receive a final email with details of the recently registered work, a unique username and password. This unique username and password can be given to anyone that you may need to prove the work is registered. The username and password can be entered in the "Search Protected Work" page and the work will be displayed for download.

This in itself is an effective deterrent of anyone using your music without permission.