Clearing, Registering, and Collecting on a Musical Work: A Practical Checklist

Sports and Entertainment > Music Rights and Royalties | Published 20 March 2024 - Updated 7 May 2025 | UpLaw - uplaw.us

Stage 1 takes ten minutes and prevents most music litigation. Stage 4 has a three-month deadline that cannot be extended.

Stage 1 — Fix Ownership at Creation

☐ Sign a split sheet the day the song is written. Not next week. In the room.

☐ List every person who contributed anything to the composition — melody, lyrics, the bridge idea, the hook someone hummed. Under joint authorship rules, a contributor of protected expression may co-own the entire work.

☐ State each person's percentage in writing and have everyone sign. Absent agreement, shares are presumed equal regardless of relative contribution.

☐ Record roles: music, lyrics, or both; and each writer's publisher affiliation and performing rights organization, if any.

☐ Distinguish composition contribution from performance contribution. A guitarist who played someone else's part is a performer, not a co-author.

☐ Confirm the work is fixed — a recording, a lead sheet, a voice memo. Protection under 17 U.S.C. § 102 attaches on fixation.

☐ Understand what each co-owner can do without you: grant a non-exclusive license unilaterally, subject to a duty to account. An exclusive license requires all co-owners.

☐ Note that any exclusive transfer must be in writing and signed. 17 U.S.C. § 201.

Stage 2 — Producers, Session Players, and Guests

☐ Sign the producer agreement before the session, covering: ☐ points on the master and whether payable from record one or post-recoupment ☐ any composition share, tied to the split sheet ☐ credit ☐ a work-for-hire recital and a backup assignment of the producer's recorded contributions ☐ delivery and approval of masters

☐ Obtain signed work-for-hire or assignment forms from every session musician and vocalist. An unsigned performance is an unresolved ownership interest in the master.

☐ Obtain a release from any featured guest, stating whether they receive a composition share and on what terms their performance may be used.

☐ Check the work-for-hire analysis. 17 U.S.C. § 101 requires either employment within the scope of employment or a commissioned work in one of nine enumerated categories with a signed writing. Community for Creative Non-Violence v. Reid, 490 U.S. 730, applies common law agency factors — a paid contractor is not automatically an employee.

☐ Always include the backup assignment. If the work-for-hire characterization fails, the assignment carries the transfer.

☐ Document who paid for the session, which is evidence but not ownership.

Stage 3 — Samples and Interpolations

☐ Identify every borrowed element — audio samples, replayed parts, quoted lyrics, melodic interpolations.

☐ For a sample, clear BOTH copyrights: the master owner and the composition owner(s).

☐ Do not rely on a de minimis defense. The circuits disagree, and the exposure includes statutory damages under 17 U.S.C. § 504 and fees under 17 U.S.C. § 505.

☐ Consider interpolation instead — re-record the part, clear only the composition, skip the master negotiation entirely.

☐ Identify current owners, not historical ones. Catalogs change hands constantly.

☐ Request in writing with the specific use, duration, territory, media, and term.

☐ Budget three to six months and do not schedule a release until every consent is signed.

☐ Expect terms of a flat fee, a percentage of the new composition, sometimes a master share, and occasionally a mandated writing credit.

☐ For a cover recording, either comply with the compulsory license under 17 U.S.C. § 115 or license directly. Remember the compulsory license does not permit changing the basic melody or fundamental character, and does not cover audiovisual use.

☐ Public domain source? Verify the underlying work's status, and note that a specific modern arrangement may itself be protected.

Stage 4 — Copyright Registration (Three-Month Clock)

☐ Register the composition with the Copyright Office. 17 U.S.C. § 408.

☐ Register the sound recording separately, unless a combined option applies on the specific facts.

☐ Do it within three months of first publication. 17 U.S.C. § 412 bars statutory damages and attorney's fees for infringement commencing before registration unless this window is met. Actual damages for one song are usually trivial; this provision decides whether a case can be brought.

☐ Understand you cannot sue until the Office acts. 17 U.S.C. § 411; Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com, 139 S. Ct. 881. Filing is not enough — expedited processing exists and costs extra.

☐ List all authors and claimants accurately, matching the split sheet.

☐ Identify any pre-existing material and limit the claim accordingly.

☐ Verify the publication date and status. Errors here cause the most registration problems.

☐ Know the tolerance for mistakes. Unicolors, Inc. v. H&M Hennes & Mauritz, L.P., 142 S. Ct. 941, holds a registration survives inaccurate information unless the applicant knew it was inaccurate, including a mistake of law.

☐ Retain the certificate. Early registration creates a presumption of validity. 17 U.S.C. § 410.

☐ Use a copyright notice where appropriate. 17 U.S.C. § 401.

☐ Calendar the duration. 17 U.S.C. § 302.

Stage 5 — The Three Registrations That Actually Pay

☐ The mechanical licensing collective — register every composition with accurate splits, writer and publisher information, and recording identifiers. The blanket license under 17 U.S.C. § 115 pays through this entity.

⚠ Unmatched royalties are eventually distributed by market share to publishers who did register. An unregistered songwriter funds other people's income. Check the matching tool for unclaimed works.

☐ A performing rights organization — affiliate as a writer, and separately as a publisher if you own your publishing. ☐ Register every composition with accurate splits ☐ Ensure co-writers registered the same splits at their own organizations — mismatches suspend payment ☐ Submit live performance set lists. This is free money most independent artists never claim. ☐ Arrange foreign collection through sub-publishing or direct society registration

☐ The digital performance collective — register as the sound recording owner and as the featured artist. 17 U.S.C. § 114 royalties are split by statute.

⚠ The featured artist share is paid directly and is NOT subject to label recoupment. An unrecouped artist can still be collecting here — but only after registering.

☐ Confirm non-featured musician and vocalist shares are being administered for session participants.

☐ Verify the digital service providers have correct metadata — ISRC for recordings, ISWC for compositions, correct writer credits.

☐ Audit your own metadata annually. Bad metadata is the leading cause of unpaid music royalties, ahead of every form of misconduct.

Stage 6 — Release and Licensing

☐ Confirm all Stage 1 through 5 items are complete before the release date.

☐ Distribution agreement reviewed for term, fee, ownership (retain masters where possible), territory, and termination rights.

☐ Sync opportunities. Prepare a clearance-ready package: a one-page rights sheet stating every composition owner with contact and share, the master owner, and confirmation that one party can grant on behalf of all.

☐ Understand that sync and master use licenses are never compulsory. Either owner may refuse.

☐ Negotiate sync deal points: media and platforms; territory; term; exclusivity; the specific cue and duration; prominence; options for additional media; most-favored-nation clauses; re-use obligations; and credit.

☐ Watch the blocking problem. One unlocated co-writer with a five percent share can stop a national campaign. This is what Stage 1 prevents.

☐ For film and television, expect the producer to require full clearance documentation, warranties, and errors and omissions insurance.

☐ Venue licensing is the venue's obligation, but confirm it for your own events.

☐ Coin-operated players and specialty uses: 17 U.S.C. § 116.

Stage 7 — Reviewing a Recording or Publishing Agreement

Recording agreement — negotiate in this order:

☐ Ownership and reversion. Perpetual transfer versus a license term with reversion. The largest long-term value item in the document. ☐ Recoupment basket. Which costs are recoupable, at what percentage, and whether albums are cross-collateralized. ☐ Royalty base and rate, with net receipts for digital defined as gross less only itemized actual third-party costs. ☐ Term and options, with objective delivery standards rather than "commercially satisfactory." ☐ Controlled composition clause — strike it or remove the song cap and rate-freeze date. It discounts the artist's own composition income under 17 U.S.C. § 115. ☐ Audit rights: notice period, three-year look-back, auditor of the artist's choosing, contingency permitted, cost shifting above an error threshold, and an objection period long enough to use. ☐ Work-for-hire recital. Resist it, or preserve the dispute expressly — it controls whether termination under 17 U.S.C. § 203 is available in thirty-five years. ☐ Creative controls, key person, leaving member, and re-recording restrictions.

Publishing agreement:

☐ Ask the threshold question: does the publisher take ownership of the copyright, or only administer it? ☐ Term, retention period after term, and reversion of unexploited works ☐ Territory and sub-publishing splits ☐ The split, advances, and recoupment ☐ Minimum delivery commitments ☐ Approval over sync uses, especially political or objectionable placements ☐ Audit rights ☐ Whether the publisher's affiliates may license to themselves

Band agreement:

☐ Name ownership, ideally in an entity ☐ Departure and buyout ☐ Composition splits ☐ Master ownership ☐ Decision-making and deadlock ☐ Touring and merchandise income ☐ Register the name as a trademark. 15 U.S.C. § 1125.

Stage 8 — Royalty Statement Review

Do this every statement, not every decade.

☐ Are all territories reporting, or only domestic? Foreign income sitting in an unregistered society is the most common silent loss.

☐ Is foreign income arriving net of a sub-publisher share you never agreed to?

☐ Do stream counts on the statement match public figures? Order-of-magnitude mismatches indicate a matching failure, not theft.

☐ Is the mechanical rate the statutory rate, or a reduced controlled composition rate?

☐ Are recoupable costs itemized, and do they match approved budgets?

☐ Have prior-period reserves been liquidated on schedule?

☐ Is any income stream missing entirely — most often the digital performance royalty, because the artist never registered with the collective.

☐ Are producer points being deducted correctly and from the right base?

☐ Is cross-collateralization being applied where the contract does not permit it?

☐ Calendar the contractual objection period. Many agreements make statements incontestable after one or two years. This runs independently of the copyright limitations period, and it is the reason annual review beats a late audit.

If an audit is warranted: ☐ Serve notice within the contractual window ☐ Agree scope and periods ☐ Demand source data, not summaries ☐ Test a sample period first ☐ Expect systems error rather than fraud — unmatched usage, misapplied rates, wrong territory allocation, uncredited withholding ☐ Negotiate; full litigation is rarely economic

Stage 9 — Termination of Transfers

☐ Build a grant register: every transfer ever signed, the execution date, whether it covered publication rights, and the publication date.

☐ Compute the window. 17 U.S.C. § 203 — five years beginning thirty-five years after execution, or for grants covering publication, thirty-five years from publication or forty from execution, whichever ends earlier.

☐ Calendar year thirty-three for each grant. Notice must be served two to ten years before the effective date.

☐ Pre-1978 grants: check 17 U.S.C. § 304 for the parallel renewal-term windows.

☐ Serve and record the notice with the Copyright Office. Both steps are required.

☐ Confirm the statutory successors and satisfy the majority requirements among heirs. The statute, not the author's will, controls who may terminate.

☐ Screen the two carve-outs: ☐ Work made for hire cannot be terminated — there is no author. Assess whether the recital is effective under 17 U.S.C. § 101 and Community for Creative Non-Violence v. Reid, 490 U.S. 730. ☐ Derivative works prepared under the grant may continue under its terms. Mills Music, Inc. v. Snyder, 469 U.S. 153; compare Stewart v. Abend, 495 U.S. 207.

☐ Ignore any contractual waiver. The right exists notwithstanding any agreement to the contrary.

☐ Missed windows are not curable. There is no excusable neglect doctrine here.

Stage 10 — Enforcement

☐ Confirm registration status and dates first. 17 U.S.C. § 411 governs whether you can sue; 17 U.S.C. § 412 governs whether it is worth it.

☐ Identify which copyright was used — composition, recording, or both.

☐ Analyze originality and filtration. Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service, 499 U.S. 340. Common progressions, scales, and stock figures are unprotectable; retain a musicologist early.

☐ Assess fair use honestly. 17 U.S.C. § 107; Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, 510 U.S. 569; Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises, 471 U.S. 539.

☐ For online uses, start with a takedown under 17 U.S.C. § 512: ☐ send to the provider's designated agent ☐ include all statutory elements, including the good faith belief and perjury statements ☐ do not over-claim — misrepresentation carries liability ☐ understand that a counter-notice starts a clock requiring suit, not correspondence

☐ Consider a licensing invoice before a lawsuit. For a modest use it produces money; a lawsuit usually does not.

☐ Consider the Copyright Claims Board for small claims, noting opt-out rights and damages caps.

☐ If suing: the claim arises under 17 U.S.C. § 501; remedies are injunctions under 17 U.S.C. § 502, impoundment under 17 U.S.C. § 503, damages under 17 U.S.C. § 504, and fees under 17 U.S.C. § 505.

☐ Assess fee exposure in both directions. Fogerty v. Fantasy, Inc., 510 U.S. 517, applies the same standard to prevailing defendants.

☐ Secondary defendants: analyze under Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, 464 U.S. 417, and MGM Studios v. Grokster, 545 U.S. 913.

☐ Watch preemption before pleading state law claims. 17 U.S.C. § 301.

☐ Name and likeness claims are separate: 15 U.S.C. § 1125 for trademark, state right of publicity informed by Zacchini v. Scripps-Howard Broadcasting, 433 U.S. 562.

Stage 11 — Annual Maintenance

☐ Reconcile all splits across the Copyright Office, the mechanical collective, and the performing rights organization — mismatches suspend payment ☐ Check the mechanical collective's unclaimed works tool for your catalog ☐ Confirm the digital performance collective has current banking and address information ☐ Submit the year's live performance set lists ☐ Verify metadata (ISRC, ISWC, credits) at every distributor ☐ Review every royalty statement against Stage 8 ☐ Update the grant register and confirm no termination window opens within two years ☐ Confirm trademark registrations and renewals for the artist or band name ☐ Confirm new works from the year are registered within the 17 U.S.C. § 412 window ☐ Refresh the one-page rights sheet used for sync clearance requests

Ten Failures That Cost Musicians Money

1. No split sheet. Ownership becomes a memory contest, and equal shares are presumed.
2. Registering the copyright after a dispute starts. 17 U.S.C. § 412 forecloses statutory damages and fees.
3. Never registering with the mechanical collective. The money goes to the unclaimed pool.
4. Never registering with the digital performance collective. The artist share, which bypasses recoupment, is simply lost.
5. Never submitting live set lists to the performing rights organization.
6. Mismatched splits across collectives, which suspends payment for everyone on the song.
7. Releasing before sample clearance closes.
8. Signing a controlled composition clause without reading it.
9. Letting the contractual objection period run on royalty statements.
10. Missing the termination window under 17 U.S.C. § 203 — the one deadline with no cure.

Quick Reference: Who Do I Need Permission From?

The use	Composition owner	Recording owner	Compulsory?
Recording your own cover	✔	—	yes, § 115
Sampling the original record	✔	✔	no
Interpolating (re-playing) a part	✔	—	no
Using the record in a film or ad	✔	✔	no
Re-recording the song for an ad	✔	—	no (sync required)
Playing it on terrestrial radio	✔	—	blanket license
Streaming it on demand	✔	✔	blanket (composition) + direct (recording)
Internet or satellite radio	✔	✔	statutory, § 114
Performing it live at a venue	✔	—	venue's blanket license
Printing sheet music	✔	—	no
Posting a cover video online	✔	—	no (sync required; platform deals may cover)
Remixing the master	✔	✔	no

Read the last column first. Only two rows are compulsory, and they are the reason cover songs and internet radio exist as routine businesses.

The Ten-Minute Version

If a musician reads nothing else:

1. Split sheet, signed, in the room, the day you write it.
2. Register both copyrights within three months of release.
3. Register with three collectives — mechanical, performance, digital performance.
4. Submit your live set lists.
5. Never release before samples clear.
6. Read the recoupment clause before you spend the advance.
7. Calendar year thirty-three on every grant you sign.
8. Check every royalty statement, every time.
9. Keep your metadata identical everywhere.
10. Own your name.

Scripts for Conversations That Go Wrong

Asking for a split sheet without insulting anyone. "Before we lose the thread on who did what — let's write it down while we remember. It's five minutes and it means nobody has to reconstruct this from memory in three years." Frame it as memory, not distrust. It works every time.

Telling a co-writer their share is smaller than they think. "Here's the default rule if we don't write anything down: everyone owns an equal share regardless of contribution. That's the law, not my opinion. So let's decide what's fair now, while we all agree it's fair."

Explaining recoupment to an artist who just got an offer. "The advance is real money and it's yours. The royalty is a number you will probably never see, because the label recovers everything it spends before paying it. So negotiate the advance, negotiate reversion of your masters, and treat the royalty rate as the least important number in the document."

Telling a client the case isn't worth bringing. "You own it, they used it, and you're right. But you registered eighteen months after release, so under 17 U.S.C. § 412 there are no statutory damages and no attorney's fees. Your actual damages are the license fee — maybe $800. The suit costs far more than that. Let's send an invoice and register everything else today."

Responding to a takedown of your own video. "A counter-notice starts a clock. If they file suit within the statutory period, the material stays down and you're in federal court. If your use isn't clearly licensed or clearly fair under 17 U.S.C. § 107, a counter-notice is an invitation, not a defense."

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