If you are in the US (and this most likely applies to most countries outside the US), you already have a copyright on anything you create. But yes, you can drive the point home by putting a copyright notice on the sheet music which isn’t strictly necessary but everyone does it so you might as well. I do this as does everyone I know. It’s easy and legal though it doesn’t provide any extra protection (except maybe to discourage someone from thinking you’ve released the work to the public domain).

If you ever need to sue someone for actual money, then you need to register your sheet music with the US Copyright office. If you are planning on making money from your sheet music, this is probably a good idea.

I do not work with ASCAP or any other performance rights organizations. My music is is more in the avant-garde style of classical so I’m not really concerned with performances plus I license my music with a very liberal Creative Commons license so no one would have to pay royalties anyway. All that to say, I don’t really have any advice for that side of things.

How deep are you looking to go into it? Do you want to sell physical copies of your sheet music?

I have a very simple setup using Paypal. They let you create buttons for whatever items you want to sell and then you just put the code into you website and it just works. There’s lots of options on how to charge or even let people enter in their own amounts (like for donations) and different kinds of buttons and/or links. I found it pretty easy and they handle all the security stuff.

Anything more complicated than that and I have no experience with it.

That is interesting. Of course composers deserve royalties, right? Strange that it was even a question! I do happen to use a permissive CC license for everything I do but that’s my choice and I certainly don’t expect everyone to follow in my footsteps.

I love his dismantling of the [r/R]omantic view of composers being ascetics living on bread and water in dusty attics and not wanting anything to do with that filthy lucre that is permissible for all others in the music industry to pursue. That myth of the composer doing it for art and not caring about the money still exists today and is part of how people differentiate classical (or “Art”) music from other genres. One of my favorite quotes from Cage on this subject in a foreward he wrote for a bio on Schoenberg:

“Like most other composers, Schoenberg had more or less constant money problems. The thought arises whether these are not the true subject of music.”

Also interesting is the few composers who had managed to enter the repertory of the day (1939) according to him: Strauss, Stravinsky, and Sibelius (the original 3 S’s?). I feel like Strauss’s place isn’t particularly secure anymore and just like in the article, it’s only a few of Stravinsky’s early pieces that have made it. I guess Sibelius has weathered that storm pretty well though I don’t think he’s as popular as he apparently was back then.

Awesome! Thanks for showing up! So far I’m liking how Lemmy works so who knows, maybe this can become a thing.