Sunday, March 4, 2012

(406) YOU CAN'T COPYRIGHT A SONG TITLE

If you explore a music/song database, such as BMI, using the title of one of your favorite songs, you may be surprised to learn that several songs share a title.

That's because titles of songs are NOT copyrightable.

Let's say then that you search by artist, because you associate the artist with the song. That might help you get to the right song with that title you remember. But several artists may be shown associated with that song as well because the truth is the COVER TUNE ERA never really went away.

This is where a YouTube video may help.

If it's a historical music video, at least you can hear the song and confirm that it's the song you associate with an artist, and sometimes the video poster will have a picture of a label and other information.

Yet, we also have to tell you, small record labels didn't always have the labels printed correctly. There are times when the actual label on the record has mispellings or missing information!

No comments: