Copywriting your music

[Toloache]

I was just wondering... How do you guys copyright your music before sending it out to the world?

In theory i would have to register to the copyright agency that there is in my country, this cost about 200 euro annual and a fee per track... Given that im not at the level that i put out a track every month, but more like a track per year, i would have to pay this subscription fee almost per track, which make my cost of copyrighting almost 250 euro per track, and i domt know if it even will be released.. Plus im a student, with the international crisis i struggle finding work, so 250 euro are a bit too much to spend for the hope of being labelled.

Im not interested in gettig payed everytime my tracks are played. Honestly i dont think i make the type of music that will be aired on radio, and usually when i was a pr, often i saw dj's dont write down the tracks they play, or they write that they play their track or friends track to make them earn the money. So i wont bother. Earning from track playing will be minimum unless a track would be featured in some spot like David Guetta lol.

All i want is a decent copyright services that secure my music. What is the way to go?

[steevio]

i've never copywrited a tune in my entire life.

whats the point? this is the underground.

[optX]

toloache... just give your tracks a creative commons license.

I am running a little netlabel and doing it this way : our released tracks are labeled as Creative Commons (by-nc-nd) which means that everybody is allowed to download the tracks, to give them away and to perform them for free and legal. Nobody is allowed to do remixes or take parts of them for their own music and nobody is allowed to use the tracks for commercial purposes.
To be precise everybody who handles our tracks has to mention where he/she got it and how its licensed, but I don't care if guys are doing this.

You can give your tracks a Creative Commons license of your taste, disable download if you don`t want the people to download (eg on soundcloud) and everything is fine.

Creative Commons has won against collecting societies several times (on court), so its not a hippy thing

How can you do that? --> On soundcloud or wherever you are showing your tracks in the internet you can add a little notice. There you mention that its licensed as Creative Commons and you`re ready.

http://creativecommons.org/

[Toloache]

i've never copywrited a tune in my entire life.

whats the point? this is the underground.

At the moment im investing lot of energy in this, i have two things i love in my life, graphic design and music and would like to earn money to live from one of the two, the first in the list being music. It's something i could spend hours without being bored and will really like to live from it. I dont wanna to be rich, but i would love to spend my life doing something i love doing. So in a sense, i hope not to remain underground.

But i live with my family and im young, but not too young to be here earning nothing and dedicating all my time on a passion. So i have to be realist. My family push me to stop making music for hours to and concentrate to something more real.

I have a track that received good feedback from local djs, and i plan to get it mastered, copyrighted and sent as a demo to some good label. If the things works im going to continue to use most of my energies here. I have to have a contract that demonstrates my family and miself that im not wasting time doing nothing.

If it doesnt work, i will sure continue making music as a hobby but i will move most of my dedication to full time graphic design and to find a shitty job to pay my studies in the meantime. So in a sense i would like to do things right and copyrighting the track make sense to me. And if i have to be honest i was thinking to send you a pm to ask you to have a listen at this track to have your honest opinion if it could work and it's on a release level, because it's years i read your post here and if im making music i like, it's because of all the things i learned reading you and the other knowledgeable guys here

toloache... just give your tracks a creative commons license.

I am running a little netlabel and doing it this way : our released tracks are labeled as Creative Commons (by-nc-nd) which means that everybody is allowed to download the tracks, to give them away and to perform them for free and legal. Nobody is allowed to do remixes or take parts of them for their own music and nobody is allowed to use the tracks for commercial purposes.
To be precise everybody who handles our tracks has to mention where he/she got it and how its licensed, but I don't care if guys are doing this.

You can give your tracks a Creative Commons license of your taste, disable download if you don`t want the people to download (eg on soundcloud) and everything is fine.

Creative Commons has won against collecting societies several times (on court), so its not a hippy thing

How can you do that? --> On soundcloud or wherever you are showing your tracks in the internet you can add a little notice. There you mention that its licensed as Creative Commons and you`re ready.

http://creativecommons.org/

will this work fine if i want to send the track to a label for commercial purposes? What about if someone want to do a remix but i want to protect me from stealing, so i have to choose that the tracks or parts of it cannot be used from others?

[steevio]

i've never copywrited a tune in my entire life.

whats the point? this is the underground.

At the moment im investing lot of energy in this, i have two things i love in my life, graphic design and music and would like to earn money to live from one of the two, the first in the list being music. It's something i could spend hours without being bored and will really like to live from it. I dont wanna to be rich, but i would love to spend my life doing something i love doing. So in a sense, i hope not to remain underground.

yes but you wont make much money from selling your music unless you are making mainstream commercial pop music, or you are one of the tiny percentage of artists who rise to the very top of the game.
the most likely way to make a living from electronic music is gigs.

i only have one thing that i love in my life apart from family and friends, and that is music. i survive, but i couldnt if i was relying on sales of my music. i treat that as promotion. and if someone big uses your track in a DJ mix they will have to contact you anyway for permission, copywrited or not. i've had several tunes used on big mix CDs and the DJ / record companies have always asked permission. however you wont make much money from that either, by the time the production costs, record company profit and all the royalties are taken into account, you get a tiny percentage.
i had a track on a Josh Wink Ministry of Sound Sessions Mix CD, and i hardly got anything for it, but the amount of promotion i got from that was increadible. that was worth thousands of times more than what i got paid for it.

if anyone who isnt well known uses your track, then who cares ?, they arent making anything out of it either, its just free promotion for you.

if someone big steals your loop, then the Creative Commons License might protect you, but lets face it, theres so much genericism in electronic music, that its often hard to tell whether its yours anyway, with everyone using similar equipment, generic 4/4 rhythm patterns, it would have to have some original (not sampled) vocal, or really unusual sound in it, to stand out as your own, especially if its been doctored in software.

release some good music, which in turn will bring the promoters to your door, and get out gigging, and stop worrying about someone using your music, thats my advice. see someone using your tunes as a positive thing, and a compliment.

[Mono-xID]

to live from music is very hard nowadays...you have to be veerrrrry lucky....since the digital revolution,everybody is making music...it's not enough to produce a good track...it has to be AMAZING and maybe then you'll get signed by big labels...you must promote and advertize yourself real heavy...maybe then u get enough bookings to make a living from it....

just from making good tunes and sending them out to one of gazillion internet labels,it's nearly impossible....

[tone-def]

250 euros per tracks should answer your question.

[steevio]

just from making good tunes and sending them out to one of gazillion internet labels,it's nearly impossible....

it depends what you mean by 'good tunes'

you as the artist arent the one who decides its a good tune or not, its the people who buy them.

if you put a really good tune out, people will buy it, it will get charted, you will be in demand.

the bar is set much higher these days for the reasons you have mentioned, there's just too many mediocre labels and tunes.
you simply have to rise above that, if you're not good enough, then you wont make it.