ABSTRACT
On completion of a dance track (or album), you’re obviously going to want to release it to the general public. The first step in this is to copyright the music recording and performance. This is to ensure that, wherever the music is played, you’ll be paid or credited for it, and is defined by UK law as ‘the right granted to the creators of original literary, dramatic, artistic and musical works to ensure that copyright owners are rewarded for the exploitation of their works’. Basically, this means that as long as you taken the appropriate steps to copyright your creation, you have the right to determine what people can do with what is essentially ‘your property’ and allows you to prevent anyone from:
Although the current UK law states that, as soon as you produce an original piece, it is automatically copyrighted to you, it’s vital that you take steps so that you can offer physical proof that it is your work before you sign it over to a record company or release it commercially. The most common perception of how you should keep this evidence is to write a copyright statement on the media, seal this into an envelope and post it to yourself. As long as you don’t open it, you have proof from the date stamped on the postage. However, while this approach is still commonplace amongst many musicians, it is sometimes not considered suitable evidence of copyright ownership in a UK court of law. Therefore, a much more sensible approach is to write the copyright statement on the media and mail it to a solicitor or bank and ask them to keep it (unopened) for you, as this proves to be much more reliable in court (should the copyright ownership be questioned).
