Copyright complications

[Kasey]

I asked this question in a thread awhile back, and i was told to read a bunch of the legal mumbo jumbo for copyrighting sound recordings, and that i will get the answer. Well i read it and maybe i just didnt get it but i still dont have my answer.
I have a "project" that, at its core, is me and my best friend. The system goes like this - I write a song on guitar or banjo or some other instrument, and add things to it and construct a song. Then i work with him on it and he works with me making slight alterations, and possibly adding something of his own to it. (for example, one song we recently did I wrote on guitar and there is a choir and such, and then he added a guitar part, and a piano part, although i wrote the basis of that piano part, and he added little things to it)
Then there are songs in which I he has no part at all, and did not help with the writing or anything. Then there is one song that he wrote entirely himself.

To make things more complex, we are not the only performers on the recordings. We have people in the studio all the time to help us out with instruments we can't play or when we need a choir or just because we want that person's influence or whatever. Right now there are about 20 people that have taken part in the recordings.
The actual recording is all done by me.

so... how the hell do i copyright this?? Do i have to copyright each song seperately, since I didnt totally write all of them... or do i copyright it as a band... and what about the performers who didnt write, but performed a little bit here and there. ??? i'm so lost.

 

[txladykat]

i dont recommend you copyright the album as a whole. you should copyright each song individually.

a copyright is automatically owned as soon as it is created. the purpose of going through the copyright office is merely to "register" your copyright, although this is highly recommended because it is hard to prove copyright infringement otherwise.

the issue of who owns the copyright is tricky. are the people that contributed considered works for hire or not. if they are works for hire, they dont own rights to the copyright, they were merely "hired" for input on the song. otherwise, yes, they should be listed as authors of the copyright. now, that having been said, they can assign any copyright they have to you, or anyone else for that matter. this is how it used to be (not as common anymore) done in the music industry. artists "assigned" their copyrights to the labels. i hope this answers some of your questions, but it goes alot deeper and there is not a "solid" answer to your question without substantial background information.

 

[junplugged]

a part in an arrangement isn't part of the song copyright. the melody and the lyrics are the song. copyright writer royalties come from the authorship of the song, not a bass line or the chords or the arrangement.