Copyright Registration
How Much Does It Cost to Copyright a Song?
By Jeremy Stevenson, music executive, founder of Whetstone Entertainment
Between $45 and $65 per filing at current U.S. Copyright Office rates, and much less per song if you use the group options correctly.
The short answer
Registering one song online costs $45 if you wrote it alone and own it yourself, or $65 in every other case. Batches are cheaper per song: up to 10 unpublished songs for $85, or up to 20 tracks from one album for $65. Paper filing costs $125 and there is no reason to use it. These are the current federal fees at copyright.gov; nobody legitimate can register your song for less, because everyone files through the same office.
The current fee table
$45, Single Application: one song, one author, that author is the only claimant, and it is not a work for hire. Miss any of those conditions (a co-writer, a publisher claimant, a producer split) and it does not qualify.
$65, Standard Application: the default for everything else, including any co-written song.
$85, Group of Unpublished Works: up to 10 unreleased songs in one filing, same author setup across all of them. This is the demo-folder option: $8.50 a song instead of $45 each.
$65, Works on an Album: up to 20 tracks released on the same album, filed as one group. For a full-length project this is by far the cheapest per-song route.
What a whole catalog actually costs
The math changes with strategy. Fifty songs filed one at a time at the standard rate is $3,250. The same fifty songs organized into album groups and unpublished batches can come in under $400. The catch is that the group options have qualifying rules (shared authors, same album, publication status), so the first job is knowing which of your songs are already registered and how the rest cluster.
That is exactly what the free catalog check shows you, and for rosters too large to handle by hand, the concierge service does the audit and the filing prep for you.
What the fee buys you
Registration is what converts your automatic copyright into an enforceable one: the right to file an infringement suit, and if you registered before the infringement or within three months of release, statutory damages of $750 to $30,000 per work (up to $150,000 if willful) plus attorney’s fees, without having to prove your actual losses. Measured against that, $65 is the cheapest insurance in the music business.
Frequently asked
Is copyright registration a one-time fee?
Yes. For works created since 1978, one registration covers the song for the life of the copyright. There are no renewals and no annual fees. The only reason to pay again is to fix or update the record with a supplementary registration.
Is there a free way to copyright a song?
Copyright itself is free and automatic the moment the song is fixed in a recording or on paper. What costs money is registration, and there is no free substitute for it: mailing yourself the song, notarizing it, or registering with a PRO does not let you sue or claim statutory damages.
Does registering with ASCAP, BMI, or The MLC count?
No. PRO and MLC registrations route royalties; they are not copyright registrations. Only the U.S. Copyright Office issues the registration that gives you standing to file an infringement suit. Plenty of writers collect royalties for years while their catalog sits legally unregistered.
Does one fee cover the song and the recording?
It can. If the same person or company owns both the composition and the master, one Sound Recording (SR) application can register both together in a single fee. If ownership differs, say a label owns the master and the writers own the song, they file separately.
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