A Generation Lost: How the Music Industry Lost 30 Years or So of Income

A research study released today in Great Britain shows that, despite knowing that downloading music is illegal, young people 14-24 continue to download music by whatever technological means available (see original story below). These studies seem to pop up monthly, while the lobbyists and paid-for politicians on either side of the Atlantic try to legislatively put their fingers in the dike. The content industries need to realize that they have complacently fallen so far behind technologically that they simply cannot, and will not, recover their old business model for at least a generation.

For decades, consumers happily rushed to stores to buy the latest releases from their favorite bands. From Elvis to Bill Haley, Buddy Holly to the Rolling Stones to Nirvana to Blink-182, people wanted their tunes and they were willing to pay for them. The portable record player gave way to the car 8-track player. Enter the Walkman, and then the Discman. Then, in the late 1990's some inventive and intelligent folks outside the music industry realized a vast improvement in the solution to the music portability puzzle that had so clearly intrigued people over the previous generations. Along came MPEG Layer 3 technology - you know it as MP3 - and what was a stroll became a sprint en masse.

First players like the Rio took slow steps into market acceptance. Then the Yepp player did the same. More tech savvy citizens got into the mix and along came Napster. The sprint was now a rushing stream. Up went Internet bandwidth, along came Kazaa and the iPod...and then the stream became a torrent - Bit Torrent to be exact. Over the course of less than a decade, the content industries stood by, heads in the sand while technology created by individuals and corporations alike realized all of the ease-of-distribution dreams that the content industries had always dreamed of. Every person in the world could quickly receive a copy of what they had long been willing to pay for. They could take that copy with them anywhere they went - and they wanted to do so. And the content industries stood idly by, deer in headlights, heads in the clouds...the euphemisms go on and on.

Had the industry recognized the changing tide, they would have been able to harness the wave and ride it into an explosion of success and far greater distribution. But instead they turned their backs one year, fought with all their might the next, and shrugged their shoulders the next. What was left? An entire generation who was raised on free, easily distributed, easily duplicated music and movies. Music and movies that these consumers still want.

The content industries will not recover these consumers as paying customers. It simply won't happen. Well, unless they can come up with a technological methodology to put the genie back in the bottle. Suing customers has proven costly and ineffective. Occasional talk of "educational endeavors" to apprise young people of the copyright laws have gone nowhere. And legislation will only breed more cynicism, cost more money, and lead right back to suing or pushing for prosecution of customers.

The only answer is to use all of that money and might to develop new technologies that once again make the industries' products ones that the customer must buy if he or she wants to obtain it. Until then, customers - teens and twenty-somethings - who have grown up with free music and movies at their fingertips will have no reason to change their thinking. Try telling people that we're now going to drive on the left side of the road or that they will have to use coin-operated telephones at home. Simply put, it just doesn't compute. And for a whole generation who got loose from the gates while the industry snoozed, music will always be free and the old way simply won't make sense.

The content industries can regain their paying market. It just isn't going to happen in this generation unless they start being as smart as those who have slayed their previous model and develop another model that proves that paying for the music consumers love is a necessity, not an option.

Link: Original Times Online Story: Young people ignoring attempts to combat illegal music downloading

How Do I Register Copyrights For My Band's CD (Part 3 of 3)

Alright, so if you've gotten to this point, you've already read Parts 1 and Part 2 and you just need to register the copyright in an underlying song that was written by people different from those who played on the recording. If any of this is not the case for you, or you're confused. I STRONGLY suggest you go back and start at Part 1.

Let's jump right into registering the songs you wrote. Again, this is only necessary where the writers of the songs are different from the people who played on the recordings that we registered in Part 2.

Assuming you are at the shopping cart and just registered the Sound Recordings, click "Add More Services."

This process is almost identical to what you did in Part 2.
1) Click "Register a New Claim."
2) Click "Start Registration."
3) Select "Work of the Performing Arts" and click "Next."
4) Enter the album title as "Title of Work Being Registered" and each of the song titles as "Contents Title." Click "Next."
5) Just as we did before, specify whether you have published the songs already.

6) You are now on the Authors page. Here you want to enter only the people who wrote the song - not other bandmates or studio musicians or anyone else. Only people who wrote the songs. When you hit "Save" for each person, it will ask you to specify their contribution (e.g., music, lyrics, etc.). Select the appropriate things for each person and hit save. Repeat this until you've listed all the writers, then click "Next."

7) Specify the Claimants. It should match the writers unless there was a written agreement otherwise, or if someone's contribution was a work for hire.

8) Specify if there are any parts of your song that were pre-existing. Did you quote someone extensively? Did you specify the use of a clip or sample? Most likely you're going to skip this by clicking "Next."

9) Fill in the Rights & Permissions contact.
10) Fill in the Correspondent in case the Copyright Office needs to contact you.
11) Fill in the name and address for the certificate.
12) Special handling - you most likely want to skip this. If you think any of them applies to you, you should probably be chatting with a lawyer at this point.
13) Certify your submission.
14) Review it and add it to the cart.

Now you've got your Sound Recording and you Work of the Performing Arts applications filled out and added to your shopping cart. Hit "Checkout," pay your money, and voila! You should be hearing from the Copyright Office.



Disclaimer: It's very important that you do this right. While I've attempted to help you through the copyright registration process, this is not legal advice. If you have ANY questions, you need to contact a lawyer and get them to help you complete the process properly.

How Do I Register Copyrights for my Band's CD (Part 2)

In Part 1 of this article, I explained a whole bunch of preliminary matters related to copyright registration for your band's songs or albums. Those preliminary matters are pretty important stuff. If you haven't read Part 1, you definitely should start there and then come back here to get started.

Now let's jump right into registering our copyrights.

Online Registration
You should take advantage of online registration for several reasons. First, it's convenient. You don't have to mail anything and you can simply upload your music, type in your info, pay by credit card and be done. Second, there is a reduced filing fee, which right now is $35.

1) Go to the Copyright Office's website at www.copyright.gov/eco/.

2) You'll see a brief description of the "eCO Online System." Below that, there's a link that says "Login to eCo." Click the "Electronic Copyright Office" icon next to that.

3) Click the "Continue to eCO" button.

4) At this point you're asked for login information. If you haven't registered...well, register. If you already have an account, log on.

5) You now arrive at your Open Cases screen.


Open a New Case
1) On the left side menu, under the heading "Copyright Services" click "Register a New Claim." On the next screen, click the gray box that says "Start Registration."

2) Let's start by registering the Sound Recording. So, in the "Type of Work" dropdown list, select Sound Recording. At the top, click the "Next" button.

3) Now, here's where we need to start being smart so we save ourselves all that money I talked about. Because we're registering a whole album, we can register all of the songs on that album at once rather than doing each song individually.


4) You see an empty list of works. Let's start by adding the album itself. So, click the "New" button. In the "Title Type" dropdown list, select "Title of Work Being Registered." In the box below it, type the album title. If it's a demo, an EP, whatever...give it a title. Even if it's "Demo EP." Now click the gray "Save" button above. You are returned to the list of works and you should see the album title.

5) Now we need to list the songs on the album. Click the gray "New" button again. The songs on the album are the contents of the album, right? So, in the "Title Type" dropdown list, select "Contents Title." In the box below it, type the name of the first song on the album. Click "Save." You are now returned to the works list and you should have the album title and the first song.

6) Repeat step 5 for each song on the album. When you've finished, click the "Next" button on the works screen.

7) The next screen asks if the work has been published. If you've sold the CD, posted the songs on Myspace, Sonicbids, or otherwise made the recordings public (I mean THESE recordings. Not another recording of the same song.) you MUST say yes. Answering incorrectly is not going to help you. Tell the truth. If you select yes, you will be asked for some extra information. "Year of Completion" means when the recording was finished. "Date of First Publication" means when you sold it, put it online, etc. (It does not mean when you first played it at a gig.) If you sold a CD at a gig, put down the date you did that. "Nation of First Publication" is where you published it. If you're reading this, my guess is you're going to select United States. You most likely want to ignore the other boxes, so click "Next."

8) We're now at the point where you need to name the authors of the work. "Authors" is a legal term in the copyright field. In this case, it means who wrote the song. If you and your 3 bandmates sat in a room and jammed, mixing and matching and tweaking until you came up with a song, you're all authors. And in our example, since we're talking about who played on the recording, all of the players are "authors." Click "Add Me" to add yourself and "New" to add the other people. For each one, put in name, year of birth, citizenship, domicile (what country you permanently live in). You should also select "no" for the "work made for hire" question. The only way this is "yes" is if you commissioned someone to write with you, or paid a studio musician. If you did pay a studio musician and they signed a release, put them as an author and choose "yes." Click "Save."

9) Now specify the person's contribution. For someone who played on the recording, check "Sound Recording" and "Performance." Click "Save." Repeat steps 8 and 9 until you have all of the people who played on the recording listed. Then click "Next" to move on.

10) You're now asked for the "Claimants." The Claimant is the person (or people) who will get ownership of the registered copyright. If you did not specify anyone as contributing a "work for hire" in the previous step, you should add all of the people from steps 8 & 9 to this list. The only scenarios where this list will differ from the authors list is if a) someone's contribution was a work for hire (in which case you leave him off) or b) the authors have already completed a copyright assignment where someone gave away or sold their rights. In those cases, the claimants would be the ones who were not contributing works for hire, or in the case of (b) the ones who received the assignment. If none of this sounds familiar, your claimants will almost certainly match your authors. Once you have all these entered, click "Next."

11) This step is about limiting your claim. You only need to fill this out if you sampled from an earlier work, took something from the public domain like "When The Saints Go Marching In" or based your song on a song that has otherwise already been registered. Most likely you will want to skip this step by clicking "Next." But again, make sure you answer this question truthfully (as with all portions). If you don't you could end up with a worthless registration.

12) The next three steps are easy (FINALLY!!!). In "Rights & Permissions" put in the name of the person that should be contacted if people want to use the song in a movie, want to cover the song, etc. Then enter the person you want the Copyright Office to contact about this registration. That's the correspondent. Finally, put in the name and address you want the official copyright certificate sent to. If you're doing the legwork here, it's very likely that all 3 steps will be you. Easy, huh?

13) Next is the screen asking about special handling. You almost certainly will not want to check any of those boxes. If any of them sound like they might apply, you probably have a lawyer involved already and you should get their opinion. Otherwise, skip this step and click "Next."

14) Now you've reached the Certification page. This is where you state that you've provided truthful information. It's important that you have done so. Assuming you have, type your name, check the box and hit "Next."

15) DISABLE YOUR POP-UP BLOCKER BEFORE YOU DO THIS STEP - You've now finished entering all the info you need. Review it, make any necessary corrections and click "Add to Cart." (This part seems to be slow, so just wait til it goes to the next screen.) If you read the parts above and you don't need to fill out a separate Work of Performing Arts registration, checkout and pay your money.

16) Once you submit your payment, a pop-up window will appear asking you to upload your songs. Choose your MP3 files from your hard drive, submit them, and that's it!

Congratulations! You'll be hearing from the Copyright Office.

If you do need to do a separate Work of Performing Arts registration, go on to Part 3.


Disclaimer: It's very important that you do this right. While I've attempted to help you through the copyright registration process, this is not legal advice. If you have ANY questions, you need to contact a lawyer and get them to help you complete the process properly.

How Do I Register Copyrights for My Band's CD? (Part 1)

How the heck do I copyright my band's songs or my band's CD?

This is a very common question, and the online registration process from the Copyright Office's website is not the most intuitive thing in the world. So, I'm going to try to walk you through it in as simple a manner as possible. After I explain a bunch of stuff, there's a list of steps at the bottom that you can print out and use as a guide.

Preliminary Matters
Let's quickly clear up a couple things first.

0) "Disclaimer" - This is important stuff and you need to get it right to protect your rights properly. I intend to give you an overview in this 3-part series, but I cannot, and do not, provide legal advice over the Internet. If anything you read here, or encounter while registering is not clear, you should STOP AND CONTACT AN ATTORNEY.

1) "Copyrighting" - When you file a copyright application, you're not "copyrighting" your songs. The copyright in your songs comes into existence the moment you "fix it in a tangible medium." What the heck does that mean? Well, it just means that once you make a recording of the song, the copyright exists and belongs to you. You're simply registering that copyright with the Copyright Office.

2) Why Register? The long and short of it is that you want to be able to protect yourself if somebody rips you off. Registering the copyright(s) makes it possible for you to stop an infringer from continuing to profit from a song they "stole" from you. Without a registration, you may be able to stop them from selling any more copies, but you won't get any compensation. Having the registration allows you to receive money damages if somebody rips off your copyrighted song. It's also important, for legal reasons, to register within 3 months of releasing the material. If that 3 months has expired, you should still register. But you're in better shape if you register right away.

3) Save Yourself A LOT of Money The registration fee for online filing at the time I'm writing this is $35. If you're not too savvy with copyright registration (which is not something you should expect yourself to be savvy in) you could end up paying $35 per song to register the recordings, and maybe another $35 per song to register the work itself if the writers are not the performers. That's a ton of money. You could end up spending $840 to register a 12-song album. Do it right and you can register that same 12-song album for $35 total ($70 if the writers and performers are different). A savings of $770 is a nice American Standard Strat, a used SG or a set of bass bottoms for your PA. Follow the instructions below and save yourself a lot of money.

4) Before You Start
Collect the following information: Legal name, address, year of birth and country of citizenship for all of your bandmates/co-writers. If you don't have this, you're going to end up having to save your application in the middle and come back later to finish it.

5) !!!VERY IMPORTANT POINT!!! - What Kind of Work Am I Registering? Read this section a couple times, because it's not necessarily intuitive, but it's important. If the people who wrote the song are not the same as the people who played on the recording, you need to fill out two different forms.

Let's say I'm in a band with 3 other guys. I play drums, there's a bassist, a guitarist and a guitarist/singer. If all four of us collaborate to write a song and all four of us go into the studio and record the song (or in our basement, or wherever), we only fill out one application. In that case, we only need to register the work as a Sound Recording.

Let's say the same band is involved, but the singer and bassist write the song (think Iron Maiden or the Beatles) and all four of the band members play on the recording. In this situation you need to fill out two applications. One is to register the song that the singer and bassist wrote (that's a Work of the Performing Arts). The second application is to register the actual recording that all four band members laid down. As above, that's a Sound Recording. This means that if someone wants to use the actual recording we made, all four band members get paid. If someone wants to cover the song by making their own recording, only the writers get paid.

As I said, re-read that section if you're confused, but the bottom line is, if the list of writers is not identical to the list of performers, fill out two forms (SR and PA). If the writers and performers are the same, just fill out one (SR).

Who Owns What?
When you register a work created by multiple people, each person is presumed to own an equal share. Two writers? That's 50-50 in the PA work. Four performers? That's 25-25-25-25 in the SR. If you want the ownership to be different, you need to fill out an agreement between you afterward. That agreement is known as a copyright assignment and it lets you assign rights however you want. This is a simple agreement and you may be able to find good examples online. Note that this is not a function of the Copyright Office. This is something you do on your own (hopefully with the help of a lawyer to make sure everything looks good).

OK, let's move onto Part 2 and get started.

Disclaimer: It's very important that you do this right. While I've attempted to help you through the copyright registration process, this is not legal advice. If you have ANY questions, you need to contact a lawyer and get them to help you complete the process properly.