The Difference Between Trademark and Copyright for the Music Industry
As your music gains traction and your brand identity grow in popularity, so does the need to ensure your audience associates you with your individualistic sound and style. When you start to create original work or make a name for yourself as an artist, there is no tip-toeing around protecting everything you’ve created. Take action and secure your intellectual property in the music industry before it’s too late.
From the surface, it might be challenging to decipher the difference between a copyright and a trademark. Both protect intellectual property, but when it comes to music, what exactly does each protect, and why does it matter?
For starters, you cannot trademark a song. You can, however, copyright your music and the lyrics for your songs. If you hope to protect your song from duplication or imitation, you’ll want to consider copyrighting instead of trademarking. Trademarking emphasizes preserving how your material is marketed towards consumers rather than the material–such as a song, lyrics, or audio recording. This includes downloadable music or live performances.
Are you confused yet? Let’s look at what can be copyrighted and trademarked in the music industry and creative work.
Copyright for the Music Industry
Copyrighting in the music industry is essential when you have original work. It doesn’t matter whether you’re an established artist or in the budding stages of your music career–copyrighting your music is crucial. Say you write lyrics, compose a melody or another work of art. These materials, arrangements, recordings, and performances can all be copyrighted. As a matter of fact, anything artistic as it relates to music can be copyrighted, and it will be protected once copyrighted.
Without copyright protection, someone can use your song without your permission, possibly one of the worst things to experience. You might hear your music on a Reality TV show playing in the background, on an independent film, or during the commercial break of a radio segment, and if you didn’t copyright your songs, you can’t do much about it. Many artists mistakenly assume that just because they’ve released recordings under their brand name, they own the rights to their own songs, but sadly, this isn’t true.
Take this, for instance–say you submit your track to a couple of labels, anxiously awaiting one of them to sign you. If copyright laws don’t protect this track, the label could take all your music and use it themselves. It would be a shady thing for them to do, but technically it’s not illegal, and you would be punching yourself in the stomach if it were to happen. It may seem silly to copyright a song or lyrics before it is released, but trust us, you’re better off doing so early than risk having everything you’ve worked for ripped out from under you.
Keep this in mind when you plan to showcase your music on the internet and streaming services, whether gratis or paid. Since the internet is one of the easiest and most common ways for musicians to get noticed and share their work with wider audiences, everything becomes accessible. If you don’t have your recordings and lyrics copyrighted, you are putting yourself at risk of others copying and perhaps even stealing your work.
While you can copyright lyrics, you cannot actually copyright a unique chord progression or a rhythm or groove of a track. For that reason, artists remix, extract and refine chord progressions and grooves from popular tracks and for their own use. This is why you might hear similar jingles and beats sampled in different songs and genres over the course of several generations.
All this to say, without proper copyrights or trademarks in place, claiming your original work would be very challenging if someone were to label it as their own. The process is an entire costly, timely ordeal. It’s best to avoid copyright infringement at all costs by trademarking and copyrighting very early on. A copyright owner can copyright a song or multiple songs on an audio recording and song composition for a small filing fee. This is a small price compared to what you might have to pay if someone ends up imitating or duplicating your music.
Of course, you don’t have to file copyright to sell your music, but if you care about what you’re creating, you’ll want to protect it now that it’s out for anyone to listen to.
Trademark for the Music Industry
While copyrighting protects artistic material like song lyrics, trademarks protect the commercial side of art, such as the stage name you use for touring or promotional content. Trademark protection can apply to a particular word, phrase, slogan, logo, design, and even a smell or sound–or a combination of all of the above. A trademark for any or all of these categories is a valuable commodity and a vital component to succeeding in the entertainment space.
A name is inarguably the most important feature in a musician’s career–it distinguishes an artist from the rest and how fans can identify an artist and their work. If you all of a sudden went from the name Black Sabbath to being recognized as Harbinger, all because someone trademarked your name before you got around to it, it would create a lot of confusion amongst your fan base. You’d lose a sense of identity, and trust from your followers would diminish. That is why proper ownership of a particular name is of utmost importance. Suppose you register your trademarks correctly and timely. In that case, you’re entitled to the rights of your stage name, creative works, and other distinctive symbols, including but not limited to logo designs and icons you use to identify your artistry.
Additionally, trademarking permits the licensing of the mark by third parties, such as a record label or other merchandise manufacturer, and you can even license your trademarks in exchange for financial compensation. Music brand trademarks also permit you–as the owner–to halt counterfeit or gray market goods that bear your owner’s trademarks. For example, Billie Eilish can stop a business from replicating her gender-neutral stick figure logo with her name if she wants to, as many companies profit from it even though it is not theirs.
Before entering trademarking and securing your position, you’ll need to ensure your name is up for grabs and down for keeps. Upon searching to see whether a name like yours already exists in the system, your stage name or band name should be trademarked at the USPTO. We’ve outlined the trademark classes you’ll likely list on your trademark application and what they protect. Still, we encourage you to do additional research or work with an expert trademark consultant to ensure you’ve covered all the bases and that nothing is left out.
Trademark Classes You Need to Know
Whether you are a solo music performer or a musical group, you will want the low down on trademarking classes, as more than one might apply to you. Just keep in mind that if ownership of the trademark changes over time, you’ll have to submit proper ownership documentation to the USPTO to ensure your brand is adequately protected with the new ownership.
Essential music-related trademark classes and what they cover include:
- Class 009 – For solo artists or musical groups who likely have or plan to have downloadable music and recordings available to consumers. This includes digital media such as downloadable audio and video recordings, music videos, as well as compact discs, and DVDs featuring music. This is one of the common things to trademark.
- Class 016 – For solo artists or musical groups who plan to sell merch such as posters, stickers
- Class 025 – For solo artists or musical groups who plan to sell clothing merch and wearables such as t-shirts and hats
- Class 041 – For solo artists or musical groups who offer entertainment services, such as live music performances and concerts, personal appearances, or meet and greets. This is an essential class to apply for on your trademark application if you plan to do any performing, whether you’re currently performing live or it’s just on the trajectory.
- Class 035 – For solo artists or musical groups who have or plan to have a retail of music and merchandise
We’ve crafted another article discussing all setting up your entertainment business and trademarking your artist or band name if you’d like to look further.
These will come in handy if you are devoted to expanding your reach and becoming a well-known musician.
We hope this article was helpful to you and wish you all the success on your journey to making it in the music industry!
CTA – Trademark Your Artist Name and Logo Today