Originally Posted by Ely Bass
This has been a most illuminating thread. I read the whole thing. Thank you.

So I'm not trying to hijack the thread, but instead I want to approach the question from the other side -- that of the potential infringer.

Over the years, I've played in, and recorded several original bands. Most of the songs were written by bandmates. I have the recordings. They are usually the first recordings. I'm not trying to make money from releasing these songs, but I would like to make it possible for people to hear them, mainly friends and family.

I know that I own the rights to the recordings and production. Most of these songs were written in the 90s and are unpublished and unregistered works. Most have been performed live. I've lost touch with most of the songwriters. Spotify makes it easy for songwriters and publishers to collect their royalties for streams. I'd love to do that. Searches for copyrights on Google, easysong, and with the Harry Fox Agency turn up nothing for my recording. I have several questions.

(1) What risk am I taking if I publish these works on SoundCloud and post links on facebook?

(2) Should I copyright these recordings?

(3) Any other related issues I should think about?

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You are asking for legal advice. Although I spent years in a music industry legal department, I am not an attorney nor do I pretend to practice law. I and others have already laid out the pros and cons of Registering in this thread.

Once again, whenever you make a song available to the Public in "a fixed or tangible form" (quoting the Copyright office), you are publishing and the only way to protect Published work is to register your songs and recordings correctly with the Library of Congress (LOC). Performing a song does not meet that definition, posting a recording does.

I can't recommend the current edition of Donald Passman's book highly enough. Best $17 you will spend on your career.
All You Need to Know About the Music Business: Eleventh Edition

It gets into all of your questions. Unlike I, Don is a lawyer. It's the only book I know that is current on anything going on nowadays since it is only eight months behind (nothing on AI, the LOC ruling and the implications of the WGA strike, for example).

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