If You Don't Copyright Your Beats Now, it Might be Too Late.

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]Hurry up and copyright your beats before it's too late. If you're dragging your feet on copyrighting your beats or your songs or your catalog, you could end up paying dearly for this, and I mean that literally. Now, you might think I'm saying hurry up and copyright your beats before someone steals them. That's not what I'm saying. What's happening right now, and it's crazy that that more producers aren't talking about this, is that there are some big changes coming to the copyright process, and they are not good changes. So, I'm going to break these changes down for you and how they affect you and how they affect copyrighting your beats. And if you've ever watched my videos before, you might be confused because I've often asserted that copyright protection, general copyright protection, is automatic and does not require formal copyright registration through the Copyright Office, and therefore paying to copyright your beats is probably unnecessary from a legal standpoint, from a statistical standpoint, and I'll get to that, and I'll let you know the unfortunate and kind of scary news coming from the United States Copyright Office. First, let's touch on these two lies about copyright that just won't stop floating around the music producer community. I've heard them so many times. I've I've heard them twice this morning. I've addressed them. So, so I posted to Facebook this status asking whether producers actually still believe this myth, this poor this poor man's copyright myth. You can go to copyright.gov right now, which is the Copyright Office for you that the United States, look up poor man's copyright, and they'll tell you flat out it doesn't exist. It never existed. People claim that you can put your beats [clears throat] on a flash drive, mail it to yourself, don't break the seal.

[00:01:30]For God's sakes, don't break the seal.

[00:01:32]The sealability is is directly proportional to how much copyright protection you get. This gentleman replied and said, "Look, if you don't have a little piece of paper with your name or LLC on it, you don't own anything." I've also heard people claim that if you don't have an LLC, you also don't own your copyright. Let's just bust these myths right now. Forming an LLC is not required Forming an LLC is not required, period to sell beats, to operate a business, to copyright your music. No None of that. You don't need an LLC necessarily. Automatic ownership I Okay, the sources are listed. The The only source that really matters is copyright.gov, but these are all pretty much common sense. You can find them also on copyright.gov. Copyrights are automatically belong to the individual creators by default you know, specifically for beats they're fixed in tangible form like an MP3 or wave file.

[00:02:24]If you want your corporation to own that, so like for me it would be DJ Pain 1 LLC, then I would just register the copyright under DJ Pain 1 LLC rather than my government name. But now onto formal registration because that's what we're talking about and that's the part that a lot of people think is required and that brings us to the whole point of this video why you should hurry up to register your copyrights if that's what you want to do. Here's why. I don't want to get people panicking, but there are a lot of people for whom copyright register formal copyright registration like you go and register all your beats, uh you register all your songs with the federal copyright office and a lot of people do that and for a period there was this era where like it was super cheap. You could use their eOC system and you could upload in bulk and I know there were some problems with uploading collections of songs or beats to to formally copyright.

[00:03:24]But it was it was inexpensive. It was really inexpensive to do it in bulk.

[00:03:28]Well, that's about to change. So if you do enjoy formal copyright protection via these registrations, do it now. Um this is the What is this called? The Federal Register.

[00:03:43]And as of last month, actually March, and this this could happen if it's adopted.

[00:03:53]They've decided to um add new rules and they want to increase fees. They want to change the fees across the board on federal copyright registrations.

[00:04:05]And this is happening this month. This is happening what it looks like May 20 or May 4th.

[00:04:12]So, if this ends up getting voted on what what's going to happen is a single and I don't I had to dig to see what the actual changes were. Specifically for music, if you do other stuff like uh photographs the price is going to go up from $55 to $85 to to register the formal copyright to a photograph.

[00:04:37]>> This sounds like shout out your boy Trump once again for just raising prices on pretty much everything these days.

[00:04:44]But, I know we talked about it a little bit before we jumped on the pod like cuz I've never registered a copyright.

[00:04:52]Right? Because you know, I know that just creating it you have certain level of protection.

[00:04:57]Maybe we should have somebody on to talk about the the value of actually um registering your your works. Um there is a service called Cosigned then which you can makes the process very transparent and kind of easy uh from what I understand. I've never gone through it myself, but folks over there are super cool um and it used to be uh embedded into it was an option within the terrible distributor that I used to work for.

[00:05:31]>> [laughter] >> Um but, that's how I got to know Cosigned.

[00:05:35]Um so, check out Cosigned. I think it is c o s y n and let me just verify that. If you are From what I understand, like when you do register your works, if you ever go to court or need to sue somebody, your music has to be copywritten.

[00:05:57]Like you still have a level of protection if you never get into any but like once you have a lawsuit or or need to, you know, sue someone, like uh you have more >> Yeah, it's a prerequisite.

[00:06:12]>> you have more leverage in court to actually get a judgment, actually get some money, if your music is copywritten.

[00:06:21]>> Well, well, well, well, we'll talk about that cuz I that's that's the conclusion.

[00:06:26]For a single What they're saying is across the board the price is going up 43% on average. So, that's damn near 50% that we're damn near paying double now.

[00:06:37]Uh so, so those days of affordable formal copyright registration are gone.

[00:06:43]If if this it actually is approved.

[00:06:47]I don't know uh I don't know if it has anything to do with Trump, um well, I guess inflation in general, but single application for a song with one author, $45 used to be like that's the current cost.

[00:07:03]It that will go up to 65.

[00:07:06]Um a group registration for a collection of unpublished works, 85, well, a notice of termination goes up 126% up to $1,000.

[00:07:20]Jeez, photographs very similar. Used to be 55, now they're 85. So, based on this Music Business Worldwide article, they have a quote from Ian Harrison saying, "A 43% fee hike imposed on independent artists and labels who are already navigating compressed streaming royalties, stagnant per stream rates, and no ability to pass through costs is not cost recovery, it's a barrier to justice."

[00:07:42]And they're saying now this is becoming unaffordable for most artists.

[00:07:47]Now, I guess the good news is that most of you aren't copyrighting your songs and beats period. I I think the vast majority of people aren't doing that.

[00:07:57]Because as we know, copyright protection is automatic when something is is fixed in tangible form. So, the second you bounce a beat as a wave or an MP3 file or you bounce a song as a wave or MP3 file, whatever you know, final form is playable, you have copyright protection. And when you publish it, you know, there it is.

[00:08:19]It's yours. So, if an artist for you know, I'm a producer, if an artist steals my beat, I talk about this all the time.

[00:08:27]How to go after people legally if they take your stuff.

[00:08:31]You don't need to register with the copyright office. If an artist steals your beat, uploads it to Spotify, here's what doesn't happen.

[00:08:38]Spotify doesn't ask you for your copyright registration when you reach out to them. What they do is they tell you to go to the the distributor. So, you go to their distributor and say, "Hey, this person is is using my copyrighted work." Well, the distributor's not going to ask you for your copyright registration.

[00:08:56]This has never happened to me a day in my life, and I do this all the time.

[00:08:59]They ask for a link to your original music and then a statement under penalty of perjury. Because if you sign under penalty of perjury, that's you certifying that, "Hey, I If this is false, I could get in a lot of legal trouble."

[00:09:14]Um and that's how the DMCA, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, works, which is a provision of the of copyright law.

[00:09:22]And because copyright law is federal, now this is to your point, Dame.

[00:09:26]The Supreme Court has ruled that in order to file a copyright lawsuit, cuz it's federal, that does require formal copyright registration. And then so, there are some rules there.

[00:09:37]Now, it's super rare. I looked this up.

[00:09:40]There's not much information as far as the numbers go. Um but what I found was annually, there are only a few thousand copyright infringement lawsuits, period.

[00:09:50]There might be like 5,000 copyright lawsuits cuz most of them get settled.

[00:09:54]You know, like I'm sure you've had copyright disputes, Dame, right? Where someone takes something and you just resolve it. You don't You don't go to court.

[00:10:01]>> Right.

[00:10:01]>> That's the vast majority of stuff. Like, I reach out to artists and say, "Hey, that's my beat. Pay for it." They either pay for it or they take it down.

[00:10:09]Or if I have to file a DMCA claim, it gets taken down. It It's simple. No lawyers, no court involved. Or if you do get a lawyer involved, the lawyer tries to resolve it directly. They don't really get into litigation territory cuz that's crazy. Like, I I once was being threatened by a very famous producer for some You remember that era >> [laughter] >> when MEC was transitioning.

[00:10:35]And this was more of a trademark concern, but even that, I had a friend in in trademark law, and it was a $10,000 retainer. So, >> [snorts] >> uh You want to get into that? Most people don't.

[00:10:48]Um so, out of those about 5,000 annual copyright infringement lawsuits, they said it was something like 30 of them are for music. It was a really, really small number.

[00:11:03]So, you can handle a copyright infringement situation by reaching out to the artist to resolve it. Otherwise, you can file a DMCA takedown. If it gets super serious, if there's money involved, then contact a lawyer right away, and and they'll advise you. But I think a lot of people in the music business or a lot of people who aren't that experienced in the music business think that there's a a federal copyright lawsuit every single time someone uploads a YouTube video. Cuz Cuz whenever I talk about people stealing beats, everyone's like, "Yeah, sue them. Take them to court." Like, for for what? A $50 beat lease? You really think people are suing over this? Come on, man. It It doesn't happen. It doesn't happen. So, this is I think it's more depressing news just because, especially as the Music Business Insider article explains >> [clears throat] >> Um sorry, not Music Business Insider, Music Business Worldwide.

[00:11:57]As that article explains other forms of income for artists are stagnant. Streaming rates aren't rising with inflation.

[00:12:08]Um royalty rates in general aren't rising with inflation. However, what is rising with inflation are these costs, including now, in some cases, depending on what you're doing, up to a 126% increase on these legal services with the federal government.

[00:12:26]But, the silver lining is right now, copyright law itself hasn't changed, and the mechanisms for enforcing copyrights and asserting your copyrights over your music haven't changed. So, you're still protected.

[00:12:38]It's just depending on what you need to do, you might have to pay more.