I'm no expert, but a few years back I and a friend wrote several songs that were copyrighted with the Library of Congress. This man that I knew had written several songs and collected royalties off of them. Even in Spain, he tutored me on the copyright law, but "I am no expert," by any means; that is why I titled this post this. This guy had way more experience than I did and I learned practically everything he knew about the copyright law. So, he was always against people doing cover songs. For the longest time I believed a person could get you put in jail or you could suffer being find or from being taken to court and sued. So, I never did any cover songs at that time that were copyrighted by other people before. Otherwise I would've been on YouTube a long time ago. Then one day I just decided to start doing cover songs; and I had a fairly successful YouTube channel because there was a up and coming YouTube star that put me on their channel which almost generated over 1 million hits. So, I got real worried about this. So I pulled down my YouTube channel that had that many hits and I had over 200,000 subscribers. I kind of felt bad about this because the person had put me on their YouTube channel was let down and I feel like I let those 200,000 people down. Well, I decided to create another YouTube channel and asked the person if they would put a link back up to my other YouTube channel and they said no! Not because I was doing cover songs, but because I let a lot of their subscribers down and they wouldn't post a link to my channel anymore. I know that this has nothing to do about the copyright law. But, one day, I got curious and I did call the copyright office and I asked them if you were allowed to do a cover song and they told me that you were allowed to do a cover song, not only that I called ASCAP and they also told me that you were allowed to do cover song's he said "Unfortunately yes you are" what he said was that a lot of the songwriters don't like this, but on the other hand a lot of them don't want the headache of suing you because it cost a lot and it is a long and drawn out process. The one thing he did say was that was if the band or the person or the publishing company that owns the rights to that song made a protest you would have to take it down, were I have no protest to that; That is what I would do. So I asked him; "this was at the copyright office" what was copyrightable in a song and they said it is the lyrics and the tune even if you do a cover songs or a parody. Because when you do a parody you're still breaking the copyright law because you're using the tune that was created by the said band. Now, there have been a few people have told me that I'm breaking the copyright law When I do covers on here. And those people know who I'm talking about. I'm not trying to be on ornery, mean, or start any type of controversy, and a lot of you people that are on this form are experts somewhat about the copyright law. Well, the person that told me that I shouldn't be doing cover songs and that I should just delete the cover song that I did and get a license for it, have essentially done the same thing by creating a parody song to the song called purple haze, well, they were not using the words; or shall I say he was not using the words, but he was using the melody and that is breaking the copyright law. The melody is copyrightable in copyright law. When I talked to the copyright office They told me the two elements that are copyrightable in a song are the melody and the words. You can't copyright the music but you can copyright the melody and the words. So doing what I did by posting a link to my cover song was no different than what he did by posting a link to his parody cover song. I responded after he posted the link to his cover song but never got a response back, HMM I wonder why? But anyhow, I wanted to make it clear and known on this form that it is not illegal to do a cover song as long as you email the publisher and this is what I did every single time I've done a cover song and notified them that I was going to be doing a cover songs of their artists song. It is against the law If you are making money using somebody else's material and it is against the law. If the publisher or the songwriter protest to you using their song. If they protest to it. You have to pull it down or you will get sued. But other than that, simply doing a cover songs and posting it is not against the law If you let the publisher and the artist know what you're doing and they don't protest to it. Besides when you create a song you would be crazy not to let a person do a cover song of it because if they were really popular on any digital platform your song sales would just blow up. The YouTube star that I talked about a while ago, well, her mother was a music attorney and she gave me this advice some time ago because I was very scared that I would get sued if I posted a cover song, and she told me that as long as you send an email with your intention to record a cover song and they don't protest to it. You don't have to pull it down. You just can't make any money off of it. I would like your guys input on this. But please don't post any nasty or mean comments because that would be up against the forms, rules. And I know what the terms of service says on this forum that you're not allowed to post a link to a cover song and I have done that, but the very people told me that have done that same thing.So please give your input in a nice way. Thank you! Also, let's all follow the forum rules by not posting links to any said cover song even parody if you are using the tune.

Last edited by trapper456; 04/30/20 12:29 PM. Reason: Added content at the end.
Music is an expression that is a universal language, Never criticize anybody to harshly. They need time to grow but when they do, they do. Always be kind in what you say and do because the man upstairs is watching.