I need help converting wav to mp4.

[TAE]

In the US, the only protection you have for your songs is to register them with the copyright office.

This is true, you can't sue for infringement without a U.S. copyright but....

Putting some kind of timestamp via youtube does nothing. But as TAE said, unless you're in the big time, ain't no one stealing your songs and you ain't losing any money.

You can always get a U.S. copyright after you have put it out on the internets but you have to be able to prove that it was yours before anyone else. The file on the USB stick the e-mail or the sealed registered letter do you no good in of themselves to sue someone for infringement....however they will be useful as evidence you are the creator in getting a U.S. copyright so you can stop the person from using or making any money off of your stuff after you have applied and sent a cease and desist letter to them. Once granted you can sue for royalties on any money made from when they received the cease and desist. Can't get any $$ for profits made before the cease and desist...least that's how I understand it...

 

[keith.rogers]

I want to try to protect my files by using a digital time stamp. I assumed I was going to time stamp the video file that would be on youtube that would contain my originial music from the wav files. I would like to timestamp my wav files and be done with it, but I assume I should timestamp the video file?

The file that is played back from YouTube is not the file you upload. They do their own compression to reduce the size and bandwidth necessary to play it along with a billion other streams at the same time. Embedding digital rights is pretty passé and your only real protection, such as it is, is copyright registration, and probably belonging to a PRO, or using a distribution platform (at some cost) that will watch your online presence in at least the big streaming platforms. Nobody does this on their own anymore.

 

[TAE]

Or you can do this to the offender. ...Love this stuff...this is about 10 miles from my shack...crazy cool ass whoopin goin down on the bad guy

 

[Slouching Raymond]

Are you trying to bore the pants off Youtube viewers?
Even the 'videos' made up of still pictures are boring.
Shoot a video, and add your wav file to it.

 

[rob aylestone]

My distrubutor always puts my recordings up on youtube, with the cover image for 3:12. God they are boring. The useful bit is not the exposure, but it gets the audio sort of protected. If people try to embed your music on facebook, the youtube video trigers a removal. I put one of mine direct on facebook, they removed it. Posting a link to youtube is fine.

Loads of people get really worked up about ownership and rights - but the money you get is peanuts, and the only time it rears it's head are when things go viral, with your music on it. Forget all this registering copyright stuff US folk do - get it on the big platforms, and they do the policing for you.

 

[Chili]

but the money you get is peanuts, and the only time it rears it's head are when things go viral, with your music on it.

I had a song go viral on TikTok, but got nothing for it. Absolutely nothing. I can't even find the video that used my song. but millions of views. Oh well. FTR: I don't have tiktok which might be why I couldn't find the video.

 

[grh]

The file that is played back from YouTube is not the file you upload. They do their own compression to reduce the size and bandwidth necessary to play it along with a billion other streams at the same time. Embedding digital rights is pretty passé and your only real protection, such as it is, is copyright registration, and probably belonging to a PRO, or using a distribution platform (at some cost) that will watch your online presence in at least the big streaming platforms. Nobody does this on their own anymore.

I f I make a timestamp of my file, you are saying because youtube changes the file, my original file can not offer protection in court?

 

[grh]

You can embed metadata in the audio file, put watermarks on images and people will still steal them and strip out what you put on. The only thing that really matters is who comes up on shazam. I'm up to $8 a month now for audio files. If you want people to hear your music, then I can't think of any way to protect it?

Does shazam help find out if someone's music is stolen?

 

[grh]

Are you trying to bore the pants off Youtube viewers?
Even the 'videos' made up of still pictures are boring.
Shoot a video, and add your wav file to it.

I just want people to listen to the music. I will make additional videos where you see me perform.

 

[grh]

Take the file you created and put it on a usb stick and save it in a safe place.....also e-mail it to your self....both are proof of the pudding that you were in possession of said audio file at that time and date you are trying to document... I am assuming you did not formally copyright this. Here's the deal...you may be overthinking all of this. You may love this work but realistically the odds of it ever generating enough money to make you take legal action are worse than winning the lottery. I quit worrying about this kind of stuff years ago I just go for it and put it out there for my own personal pleasure and to share with my friends and loved ones.

Thank you for the timestamp and copyright advice. What do you think of this site? https://digistamp.com/

 

[grh]

Or you can do this to the offender. ...Love this stuff...this is about 10 miles from my shack...crazy cool ass whoopin goin down on the bad guy

 

[grh]

I want to thank everyone who replied. No one mentioned Creative Commons. Creative Commons is supposed to allow you to put a license on your music for how it can be used that is enforceable in court.

 

[TAE]

I want to thank everyone who replied. No one mentioned Creative Commons. Creative Commons is supposed to allow you to put a license on your music for how it can be used that is enforceable in court.

I'm thinking you might be incorrect on the court part. A CC is for allowing the world to use your work freely as long as they attribute it to you,,or if you don't want it to be attributed to you you have the right to ask them not to...That's about it The instance I put stuff out there on the internets or on a telephone pole it is copyrighted it is my work...BUT I can not sue anyone in court for infringement or try to get money from them until I actually register my copyright with the USPTO

Screen shots below kind of explain what each is and isn't...

 

[rob aylestone]

Yep, creative commons allows others to use your work. Shazam work to tag music to people, so if somebody uses your song, Facebook and other platforms know somebody else owns it. It makes mistakes, but when you use distrokid, songtradr and others, they protect your music and keep track of it - for a price, of course. Other companies exist in most countries who register music against people - here in the UK we have PRS, who work for the composers and writers and PPL, who look after recording rights. I make little money from them, but if you enter a song title, it knows who wrote it, who performed it, and broadcasters use them to pay what they owe, same as other big users of music. It also means that if you do arrangements of other people's music, you can get paid for that. I did a slow instrumental of a pice from the 60s/70s, and I got some money because the original artist used my recording as walk on music at the start of his live shows.

Seriously though - the time and effort in manually registering your rights is wasted - It was six years before I got my first PRS payment and it was only a few pounds.

 

[Chili]

I f I make a timestamp of my file, you are saying because youtube changes the file, my original file can not offer protection in court?

The only protection will you have in court is if you register your song with the copyright office (In the US, that is). If someone steals your song and you want to take them to court, no one is going to look at YouTube to see when you posted a video. The court will look at when you registered it with the copyright office. Why? Because that is how the law is written. The law says nothing about YouTube, spotify, lockboxes, post-stamped letters to yourself, and the courts need to uphold the law. So, while it makes sense that you posted it on youtube and there is a date-time stamp, it means nothing in court. Until they change the law to include YouTube.

This is all in the US, of course. The UK does have some different laws that allow for sealed letters to yourself and/or registering with a PRO.

So, it's kind of expensive these days to register a song. What is it, like $85?? It used to be $35 and even that was a lot of money. But you can register up to 10 songs on one registration, so that helps a lot. $8.50 per song.

But when all is said and done, you gotta have a top 100 hit song before you really have to worry about someone stealing it. In my experience, the most likely place for infringement is when you bring your song to your band and the other guys add in their little bits and pieces: guitar fills, bass lines, drum rhythms, etc. They get to thinking that because they came up with a great riff to add to the song, that they are now a co-writer. Then when the band breaks up, they think the song is theirs and they register it with the copyright office and go on to make millions with your song with their new band.

And because you posted it on youtube instead of registering it, you lose the court case.

 

[ecc83]

TAE said..."Microsofts new video editor is similar but more cloud based me no likey..." And nor should you friend!
People are not aware that a "cloud" is actually a server farm size of a footy pitch and uses megawatts of electricity and millions of litres of water for cooling. They are a huge problem for the planet. Fun fact: It is estimated that if plans are approved in a few years ONE THIRD of the electrical consumption of Ireland will be by server farms.

Millions of people dump billions of photos every year to a cloud and never look at them again but the data still has to be kept.

Sorry for the OT rant.


Dave.

 

[rob aylestone]

I think the interesting difference between US and UK is just one sentence where our laws differ.
"Mere ownership of a copy or phonorecord that embodies a work does not give the owner of that copy or phonorecord the ownership of the copyright in the work."
Here, ownership is the basis - which is where our system of sending it to yourself in the Royal Mail, gains it's basis. Both countries have the same initial point of copyright creation - when you produce it, it's your copyright. It started when you commited the brain thoughts into something physical. That's all that has to be proven here, in the US, ownership of the rights is different to ownership of the product. we have a similar Government Department - but they do not register rights at all, just protect them. It's our job to collect sufficient evidence to satisfy Judge Judy. In practice a few of my tracks are everywhere, bar America and a few other countries with similar rules to the US. I can live with that.

 

[Slouching Raymond]

TAE said..."Microsofts new video editor is similar but more cloud based me no likey..." And nor should you friend!
People are not aware that a "cloud" is actually a server farm size of a footy pitch and uses megawatts of electricity and millions of litres of water for cooling. They are a huge problem for the planet. Fun fact: It is estimated that if plans are approved in a few years ONE THIRD of the electrical consumption of Ireland will be by server farms.

Millions of people dump billions of photos every year to a cloud and never look at them again but the data still has to be kept.

Pretty much like HR posts.

 

[grh]

I'm thinking you might be incorrect on the court part. A CC is for allowing the world to use your work freely as long as they attribute it to you,,or if you don't want it to be attributed to you you have the right to ask them not to...That's about it The instance I put stuff out there on the internets or on a telephone pole it is copyrighted it is my work...BUT I can not sue anyone in court for infringement or try to get money from them until I actually register my copyright with the USPTO

Screen shots below kind of explain what each is and isn't...

View attachment 133067

View attachment 133064

I'm thinking you might be incorrect on the court part. A CC is for allowing the world to use your work freely as long as they attribute it to you,,or if you don't want it to be attributed to you you have the right to ask them not to...That's about it The instance I put stuff out there on the internets or on a telephone pole it is copyrighted it is my work...BUT I can not sue anyone in court for infringement or try to get money from them until I actually register my copyright with the USPTO

Screen shots below kind of explain what each is and isn't...

View attachment 133067

View attachment 133064

The cc site says the license's are enforceable in court and gives examples. Do you know drums by themselves canno't be registered for copyright? I want to put videos of my drum compositions on YouTube. If you want to offer your drums to other musicians to use say royalty free, you normally have them buy a license from you. (not cc) Can I put my drum compositions and other music on YouTube under a cc license that offers protection? Read the information about the cc license I want to use on youtube I posted below.

• CC BY-NC-ND: This license allows reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator.

CC BY-NC-ND includes the following elements:
BY

– Credit must be given to the creator
NC

– Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted
ND

– No derivatives or adaptations of the work are permitted

 

[grh]

The only protection will you have in court is if you register your song with the copyright office (In the US, that is). If someone steals your song and you want to take them to court, no one is going to look at YouTube to see when you posted a video. The court will look at when you registered it with the copyright office. Why? Because that is how the law is written. The law says nothing about YouTube, spotify, lockboxes, post-stamped letters to yourself, and the courts need to uphold the law. So, while it makes sense that you posted it on youtube and there is a date-time stamp, it means nothing in court. Until they change the law to include YouTube.

This is all in the US, of course. The UK does have some different laws that allow for sealed letters to yourself and/or registering with a PRO.

So, it's kind of expensive these days to register a song. What is it, like $85?? It used to be $35 and even that was a lot of money. But you can register up to 10 songs on one registration, so that helps a lot. $8.50 per song.

But when all is said and done, you gotta have a top 100 hit song before you really have to worry about someone stealing it. In my experience, the most likely place for infringement is when you bring your song to your band and the other guys add in their little bits and pieces: guitar fills, bass lines, drum rhythms, etc. They get to thinking that because they came up with a great riff to add to the song, that they are now a co-writer. Then when the band breaks up, they think the song is theirs and they register it with the copyright office and go on to make millions with your song with their new band.

And because you posted it on youtube instead of registering it, you lose the court case.

Do you agree with TAE? If you find out your music was stolen, you could then register your stolen music with copyright.gov, and you could show digital time stamps in court as part of your evidence?