Note: This topic is for general information purposes only.  It does not take the specific situation of any copyright holder into account, and it is not legal advice.  If you are uncertain whether you should publish your work or not, you need to seek independent qualified legal advice.

Motivation to Publish

If you are composing your work purely for yourself or a private audience, and you specifically want it kept private, then obviously you have no motivation to publish, and you need read this topic no further.

Otherwise, there are two main motivations for publishing your work.

• You simply want to share your efforts with others, and hopefully have the satisfaction of being recognized for what you have created.  In this case, you want to be sure that your work will always be attributed to you.

• You are aiming to earn income from exploiting your work.  In this case, the same concern applies, but there is an extra commercial imperative on top.

The Dilemma

The publisher's dilemma is as old as the printing press.

You want your work to be circulated as widely as possible, but by making it public there is a risk that someone else will reproduce it and claim it as their own work.

While publishing does present this risk, it also offers a significant level of security compared to simply hiding your creations in your bottom drawer.

In fact, let's turn this discussion on its head and consider the risks of withholding your work from publication.

Risks of Withholding

If you have created a musical work that no one else knows about, does it really exist? The only way for your music to have a life outside of your own head is to share it with others.  What will happen to your creations if you fall under the proverbial bus tomorrow?

If you have hopes of commercializing your work, but are sitting on it because of concerns over the risk of exposure, what is the opportunity cost? Your work cannot earn anything until your customers or licensees become aware of it.

And what if someone else independently comes up with the same or a very similar composition? It may seem unlikely, but with millions of people creating music around the world, it is certainly possible and often happens.  How will anyone know that you came up with those musical ideas first?

Benefits of Publishing

All of the risks of withholding can be addressed by publishing your work.  Publishing does not have to mean being printed onto paper, and it does not have to be for profit.

Any means whereby you exhibit your work in public, whether for free or for profit, is a form of publishing and confers benefits.  There is the benefit of publicity from the moment that others start to become aware of your work.

But there is also the crucial benefit that you have established and asserted your moral right as the author of the work as at the date of publication.

Consider the song which holds the record for the most cover versions - Yesterday, by Lennon-McCartney.  Notice the attribution - by Lennon-McCartney - a fact which just about everybody knows.

After hundreds of other artists - including Frank Sinatra and Ray Charles - have recorded their own versions of this song, the original authors are more prominent than ever.

Assert Your Claim

The key to asserting your claim to the authorship of a work is in being identified with it before anyone else.

One way to achieve this is to lodge a copy of your work with a registration authority such as the US Copyright Office, or the equivalent in your own jurisdiction.

Another way is simply to publish, so that you have evidence of your association with your work at specific date, preferably with witnesses who can remember your work and the date when they first encountered it.

You must decide for yourself on the relative merits of these two strategies, and you may wish to pursue both.

This benefit of publishing is available even if the work is published for free.  Publishing for free does not undermine your claim to copyright, depending on the conditions of the license that you publish it under.

You can state that you are publishing to establish your claim to authorship, and for the personal interest of viewers, but that any other use (particularly commercial use) is either prohibited or must be negotiated separately.

ChordWizard Network

The ChordWizard Network offers a publishing facility which is designed to give your work global exposure, while providing the maximum support for your claim to authorship.  The essential aspects are:

• Published song files can use the full range of protection features, so they are easy to view and playback, but very difficult to use in any other way.  The embedded publisher link will always identify you as the author.

• When you publish a song on the ChordWizard Network, the date of publication is recorded and displayed prominently.  You can update your song at any time with an improved revision, but the previous files and dates remain available to clearly document the history of the publication.

• When other members download your songs, they are encouraged to rate them and leave a comment, which in effect is a dated witnessing of your claim of authorship over the publication.

• As ChordWizard Network members become familiar with each other's work, they build a strong co-operative community which can support the claims of each member to the authorship of their publications.