Wow -
There's a lot of really bad information here. I hope nobody reads this post and starts to rely on what they read (not that you should ever rely on anything you read on the internet, you should always consult an attorney before making decisions).
Nevertheless, lets try to straighten out some of this bad info:

John -
To answer your question, publishers usually want exclusive publication rights to songs - although there are plenty on non-exclusive publishing deals out there. You can license any part of any work to any publisher as long as you can sufficiently describe in the license agreement exactly what is being licensed.

Marc -
This is not "an era where pretty much anybody can pretty much use anything for their own use" and I take issue with your statement that "copyrights are really not holding much together anymore." There are plenty of lawsuits over copyright infringement with plenty of lawyers making a living on prosecuting infringement cases.
Although you correctly point out that people are increasingly inclined to zip your material, use it on their own You Tube videos without permissions, and that rappers sample tracks without permission, the problem is that authors either don't find out about it, or don't want to invest the time and energy (and resources) to go after the infringers. This often has to do with the failure to register copyrights, in which case you forfeit the statutory damages which are the most powerful tool for going after the infringement. Copyrights are still very valid, and there are several other weapons in the lawyers arsenal available to prosecute an infringement (like trade dilution claims, conversion,etc., depending on the nature of the infringement).

NEVER tell anyone that registering songs is a waste of money. It's absolutely necessary to properly protect the author's rights.

The Copyright office has nothing to do with Patents, I don't know where those statement above came from but the are absolutely wrong. Patents and Trademarks are processed by the PTO.

In addition, it's false to say that the copyright office is years behind on processing or that any extant delay has anything to do with whether you should register. There has been some lag time when they converted to on-line registration, but the registration dates from the date they receive it not from the date you get confirmation.

If you're sending un-registered songs around, even to publishers, you're just asking to get ripped off. ATTENTION ANYONE WHO READS THESE POSTS - IGNORE ANYONE WHO TELLS YOU THAT IT'S OK TO SEND AROUND UNREGISTERED MATERIAL or that you shouldn't copyright your work until you find that someone else has expressed an interest in it. That's complete bull and a very dangerous attitude. The people who say this are exactly the people who come to see their lawyers after somebody steals their song and tell their attorney "I realize now I should have registered it before I sent it to them...now what do we do?"

Putting a date on a lyric sheet or CD when you write a song is nice, but ineffective. Try to convince the Judge that you didn't just go back and fake it. When you get to Court after not filing to register the song that somebody else registered, you will find that registration is prima facie proof of ownership (meaning the Court must assume - sorry about using that word Brian, but it means something in the legal context- that the first registered owner is the owner in fact unless the person who subsequently registers can accomplish the uphill battle of proving otherwise.


More false information is encompassed by stating that "the suite/collection can't be broken up into parts," and that "if an exclusive publisher signs one song from this "collection", he basically owns the entire collection of songs." It is simply not true that "if selected songs are signed from this collection to more than one publisher, the publisher with the earliest signing becomes the owner of all songs in this suite/collection." That's nonsense. I don't even know how you would put that in a publishing agreement.

Marc- Melody and lyrics can be separately owned. That is why you have to specify the extent of the ownership when you register.

John and Ray- Don't confuse licensing with ownership. Unless you are selling the song outright to the publisher, the author is still the owner. Some publishing deals include a partial sale (e.g. 50% ownership) and some don't. Some only include an exclusive or non-exclusive license to publish.

The Copyright office does not check to see if the submission has been previously registered.

Copyrighting a book containing songs would not in and of itself transfer the copyright to the songs if they were previously fixed in a tangible medium (recorded or written down). The author's ownership of the copyright exists from the date the song is fixed, and transfer of ownership can ONLY be done in a written agreement.

I hope this helps and I hope anyone reading these posts reads down far enough to get this all straightened out. Some of our posters might want to consider going back an editing out some of what they said.