Finding Copyright info on the internet

People constantly ask me how to find the writer of a particular song. Due to the volume and complexity of these requests, as well as their lack of general interest to our list membership, I am unable to post them to the folk_music list. Nonetheless, I understand that this is a very real need. Therefore I am maintaining this FAQ file. The most current version will always be accessible on the Web at
http://www.alanrowoth.com/FindingCopyright.html

If you have any additions or corrections to this document, please email them to me at alan@alanrowoth.com

If you plan to record any copywritten material,

you must obtain a license to do so and pay the copyright holder for the use of their work. There are some excellent books on music that explain this. Probably the best known is "This Business of Music", but a discography of dozens of useful books in online at the ASCAP web site at http://www.ascap.com/resource/resource-2.html

If you are trying to copyright your own material

You'll want to visit the US Bureau of Copyright online for forms and instructions.

In the United States, most songwriters recover their performance royalties thru one of the big performance rights organizations; ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC. Mechanical royalties can be negotiated directly with the music publisher, but are often negotiated thru a clearinghouse. Probably the best known of these is the Harry Fox Agency. Each of these agencies maintains a searchable online database of song titles. If you find the song in their database, contact the corresponding agency for information on securing the necessary licenses. Some songs may have multiple writers and be found in more than one database. You should search all four for any song you are looking for.

ASCAP's online database
http://www.ascap.com:80/ace/disclaim.html

BMI's online database
http://www.bmi.com/repertoire/

The Harry Fox Agency
http://www.nmpa.org/search_form.html

SESAC's online database
http://www.sector3.com/sesac/

Nick Anthony's Find a Song Music Database
http://nickanthony.com/song.htm

Find Links to copyright law sites at http://http://www.folklib.net/index/copyrights.shtml and you may want to check out Brad Templetons "10 Big Myths about Copyright Explained" I especially liked this list of Musicians Intellectual Law and resources Links.
You may also want to check out this collection of links at the Nashville Pop Songwriters web site.

Due to copyright restrictions, lyrics and tablature for many (most) songs are not available on the internet. There are a some exceptions. Often recording artists may have lyric links thru their own WWW pages. Many of these are listed in the Artists section of Folkbook at:
www.folkmusic.org

That said, there are several Lyric Databases on the net. http://www.lyrics.ch/
http://www.lyricshq.com/
http://www.folklib.net/index/lyrics/
http://www.ohhla.com/index.htm
http://jslyrics.hispeed.com
And here's the lyrics links page at MP3.com

Tom Loredo provides an amazing list of acoustic guitar resources on the net at
http://www.museweb.com/ag/ There is a collection of links devoted specifically to copyright, performing rights, and trademark issues for musicians in the Copyright/Performing Rights section.

Many public domain songs that can't be found in databases of copywritten material are compiled in Dick Greenhaus's "Digital Tradition" database which is available online at:
http://www.mudcat.org/folksearch.html

For more information on the Digital Tradition, you can email Dick at:
digitrad@world.std.com

Here's another site dedicated to only public domain music:
http://www.pdinfo.com/

There is a great Sea Shanty page at http://pw2.netcom.com/~neilmber/shantyfaq/part1.html and another great discography page covering years and years of American traditional music at http://milton.mse.jhu.edu:8001/research/folkindex/.

If you know the artist, but not the song name, another place to search for information on recordings is The All Media Guide
http://www.thenewage.com/AMG/amg_root.html

Years ago, I believe that there was a database on the net correlating the first lines of songs with their title and writer. I recently searched long and hard for this but could not find it. If it does exist and anyone knows where to find it, send me the link and I'll add it to this FAQ.

If these resources fail, you are encouraged to dig deeper into some of the other online music resources:

The SongFinders list at egroups - a bunch of song sleuths try to answer your questions. Hugh Blumenfelds FAQ on finding songs at about.com University of Waterloo list of Abstracts and Indexes in Music
http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/discipline/music/abstracts.html

Mark Brill's list of web sites for musicologists.
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/music/ams/musicology_www.html

Looking to buy music books or sheet music? You might find some here at:

Sheet Music online
http://www.sheetmusic1.com/

Sheet music from Encore Music
http://www.encoremusic.com/

Another place I've never bought from
http://www.sheet-music.com/

Amazon.com Books
http://www.amazon.com/

The Innovators BookSource
http://www.webcom.com/aspen/ibc/02titles.html

Interested in MIDI? Here are a couple of links to MIDI sites:

http://www.eeb.ele.tue.nl/midi/index.html
http://www.midiweb.com/

I hope this helps. Best of luck in your search.

Since Sept 2,1999 people have stopped by to visit this page.