Man,

This is the biggest topic discussed on songwriter web sites. first of all, Vic, that process has been discredited for about 25 years. The "Poor man's copyright" is not recognized any more. You can do it, but it really is not allowed.

Copyrights are a huge bugaboo in the world of songwriting. The main reason is because everything has been done. Over and over and over. Before you go to the process of registering anything, you should probably do a Google, ASCAP, BMI, title search and see how many times your idea has been done. Usually a pretty eyes opening exprience. I had one of my students do this who had trouble believing me. He got 69 pages with over 100 examples on each page.

The US copyright office is backed up around 3 years processing claims on patents, songs, inventions, etc. The majority are not copyrightable. You can't copyright a title or idea. You can trademark names, but you might find that is a bit more involved than you think.

The best of all worlds would be having a publisher who is connected to the industry who dealt with the details of all of this. But outside of that I would suggest getting around other writers first to see what is out there. You will probably find your "unique never heard of idea",has actually been done many times before.

I have had so many people sit down telling me about their great songs, or playing them for me and it will have been some huge hit from Broadway in the 50's or 60's. Or take them to a writers night in Nashville and hear their incredible idea performed three or four times by other writers who they have never met but wrote their versions five or ten years before they even had their idea. There is nothing new under the sun.

There are new methods of registering songs, the Internet opens that up.There are services out there for doing just that, if you go to www.indieconnect.com you can find information on My Werx, which is one of these.

Most professional writers and publishers never bother with copyrights at all until something is getting ready to be commercially released. The reason is that most songs simply go no where. With one billion downloads of songs a month on the Internet, it is to me the ultimate of wishful thinking that anyone has something that has been done before.And without question in my over 30 years in this business, the people the most concerned with protection of their ideas, don't have anything worth copyrighting in the first place.

Nowadays it is more doing something we have all heard a million times before in a way or twist we haven't heard before it. More titles now are just average phrases, and the Devil of the song is all in the details of the story.

Everyone has to do what they feel comfortable with. Daniel, you can wait until you have things all copyrighted to send anything to anybody but chances are that will be a few years down the road. How are you supposed to get anyone into your music if you don't get it out there? In my opinion, song theft, where people sit around copping ideas from someone that mails something in is a total myth. There maybe many things that unconciously gets borrowed, probably all music has this in one way or another. But that is something that can't be helped. There are even current songs on the charts which have direct references to songs from earlier eras.

So if you want, wait around till you have all the forms, bells and whistles. But don't be surprised if people you know start hearing your ideas on the radio and tell you that someone stole things from you. If you do a little research you are more than likely going to find out that song was written a long time before you ever thought of yours. Takes an average of 3-8 years for songs to find their place in the marketplace. So it might be much more common than you ever considered.

MAB