Why I Register The Copyright Of My Music With Safe Creative

I have registered the copyright of my music with Safe Creative for over a decade or so and in this article i’m going to tell you a story so you know why it was a good idea.

Back in my early days of distributing my music around the internet you could put out a free tune and that would get you some attention. But what wouldn’t happen was someone would take your track and claim it as their own. Well, at least not that much. There wasn’t that much incentive.

I was even told by a big name in the Scottish electronic dance music scene that registering was a waste of time and money. But I felt it was still possible that someone could use my tracks in a way that was not what I intended and needed the proof that I made and own them.

And I was right.

Along came online distributors and all of a sudden it became easier for people to release music to the big online stores. This meant that anyone with a tune, internet connection and a bank card (or later a paypal account) could release music online.

When sync technologies where added to collect royalties came along, crooks decided they had a chance of making easy money by taking tracks which are being used in videos and putting them through Sync. Taking not just the credit, the money too.

Not only is this copyright theft or plagiarism… it’s copyright fraud. Money by deception.

My fears had came true.

On 24th December 2018 I uploaded a video containing one of my Euphorik Rhythm tracks to Facebook and immediately the video was muted. I was informed by Facebooks automated system that my video contained third party content.

Facebook had attributed my track to someone else and under a different name.

I thought “surely this is a false positive”. Nope, on searching this fakers track on YouTube it was my track in its entirety.

This has validated my reason for registering my tracks.

But why did I choose Safe Creative to register my copyrights?

Safe Creative offered something that no other site was offering, registrations under a Creative Commons license… and it was free for Creative Commons artists. Yeah, I have to admit the free part played a big part in my decision to choose Safe Creative. Even though there are now certain limits to the free registrations I feel it was enough for me.

I am happy to know that I have these registrations dating back over a decade to prove I am the owner.

I hope that this article can help make your decision on whether to register your tracks or not. Your work needs extra protection, in this digital age where music can travel far and into the wrong hands, I believe it is more important now than ever before to register them.

*Disclaimer – this is NOT a sponsored post. I wrote this as a response to what has happened to myself and others in the open audio scene.*

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