A music copyright ownership dispute is often an expensive and preventable problem. Here’s what I tell every collaborator I talk with after project ownership disputes go sideways: copyrights and IP law don’t care about your friendship. Courts won’t care if there were good vibes in the studio or on set. The only thing they’ll care about is your intent to joint authorship and what’s in writing. Too often, there’s nothing in writing at all.
Co-writer disputes are among the most common and preventable problems for collaborative creators, particularly in music. It happens between amateurs and professionals; partnerships just starting and artists who’ve worked together for years. The pattern is almost always the same: the IP has a likelihood of success or the group wants to break up and suddenly everyone’s on a different page, usually attributing more appreciable ownership to themselves.
The agreement doesn’t have to be complicated. A one-page document signed the day of the session is infinitely more valuable than a handshake three years later when the track is generating real income.
Before a joint writing session, script, music, or otherwise — these are the five things every co-write agreement needs to address:
1) Ownership Splits In Writing:
Oral agreements can become dauntingly difficult to enforce once real money is involved. Whatever you decide (weighted by contribution, equal splits always, project-by-project splits), it should be documented as early as possible, signed and in writing is best.
2) Publishing Approval Rights:
Split ownership doesn’t always translate to publishing ownership rights. When one writer controls publishing, they control licensing decisions. Ensure publishing rights are considered as well.
3) Credit and Attribution:
Mismatched credits are one of the top reasons royalties don’t reach the right writer. Make sure that your ownership information on your splits and agreements matches what you’ve registered with royalty collection agencies.
4) Joint Authorship by Default:
When your agreement fails to address ownership issues, copyright law often defaults to joint authorship rules. Some joint authorship rules, like permissions for non-exclusive use, surprise people. In those cases, you have limited say over what another co-writer can license.
Under U.S. copyright law, joint authors each hold an undivided interest in the whole work. That means either co-writer can grant a non-exclusive license to a third party without the other’s consent — as long as they account for profits. Many songwriters discover this only after a co-writer has made a decision independently.
5) 3rd-Party Publishers:
If a co-writer signs with a major publisher, their approval rights may transfer to that publisher. This might change the entire dynamic of your licensing process. If your agreement doesn’t address this through an assignment provision, it may forever affect your decision-making process. An assignment provision drafted early costs almost nothing.
Most writers don’t address ownership agreements early because it feels antithetical to the organic flow of the writing process. I’ve heard artists worry it can seem intrusive or even adversarial. If you feel it could be disruptive to the creative flow, that’s understandable, but even more disruptive is a later ownership dispute. You can wait until the end of production, but that’s probably the latest you’ll want to wait.
It can take years to resolve disputes and that takes even longer when there’s no evidence of a contract. Your process will require piece-mealing evidence of ownership with the uncertainty of it being rejected by a Court. Even people with seemingly airtight ownership claims don’t appreciate the time and effort required for a Court to award claims of ownership. You cost yourself more money just in proving ownership.
The conversation nobody wants to have before a session is the only thing that prevents much worse conversations later. You’ll have the conversation one way or another so better to do it early, when it takes ten minutes and costs nothing than later, when it might take years and cost thousands.
Working on a collaboration — or in a dispute about one that’s already generating income? A short co-writer agreement drafted before the track is released costs a fraction of what it costs to sort out afterward.