How to Copyright Song Lyrics: eCO Filing, Fees, and Ownership

To copyright song lyrics, submit an online application through the U.S. Copyright Office’s Electronic Copyright Office (eCO) system, pay a fee of $45 or $65, and upload a complete copy of the lyrics as your deposit. Copyright already exists the moment you write lyrics down, but registering is what lets you sue in federal court and collect meaningful damages if someone steals your work.¹ The whole process takes about 30 minutes online, and the timing matters: register before publishing or within three months of first publication to keep the strongest remedies available.²

Why Registration Is Worth the Fee

Copyright attaches automatically as soon as you fix original lyrics in something tangible, whether that’s a notebook page, a voice memo, or a Word document.³ Ownership on its own, though, is thin protection. Registration is what gives it teeth.

You cannot file an infringement lawsuit until the Copyright Office has actually processed and registered your claim. Submitting the application isn’t enough; the office has to act on it first.⁴ Registered works also qualify for statutory damages ranging from $750 to $30,000 per work, and up to $150,000 if the infringement was willful, plus attorney’s fees. Without registration, you’re limited to actual damages, which are hard to prove and usually disappointing when you do.¹ A certificate issued within five years of first publication also serves as presumptive proof in court that your copyright is valid.⁵

Here’s the timing trap. To qualify for statutory damages and attorney’s fees, you must register either before the infringement began or within three months of first publishing the lyrics.² Miss that window and you can still register and still sue, but you’re capped at actual damages. Experienced songwriters register early, often before anything goes public.

What You Can and Cannot Copyright

Copyright covers the actual creative expression in your lyrics: your specific words, phrasing, and arrangement. It does not protect the song’s title, a hook phrase, a slogan, or any short combination of words, no matter how clever. The Copyright Office is explicit that individual words and brief phrases lack enough creative expression to be registrable.⁶ Titles and band names live under trademark law, not copyright.

Ideas and themes are also off the table. A song about heartbreak on a highway is not something anyone owns; your particular verses about it are. And the “poor man’s copyright” trick, mailing yourself a sealed envelope with your lyrics inside, has no standing under federal law. It is not a substitute for registration.

What to Gather Before You File

Before opening the application, pull together:

Full legal name and mailing address for every author. If you co-wrote the lyrics, both names go on the form.
The title of the work and the year you finished it.
The correct work type. For lyrics alone, pick “Literary Work.” For lyrics registered together with music as a single composition, pick “Work of the Performing Arts.” One registration for a musical composition covers both the music and the lyrics.⁷⁸
A complete, legible digital copy of the lyrics. Accepted formats are.doc,.docx,.pdf,.rtf,.txt, and.html, up to 500 MB per file. Anything in another format needs to be converted first; uploading an unaccepted file type can push back your effective registration date.⁹

Filing Through the eCO System

Everything happens online through the Copyright Office’s eCO portal.¹⁰ The steps:

Create a free user account at copyright.gov if you don’t already have one.
Log in and start a new claim, selecting the work type (Literary Work for lyrics only, Work of the Performing Arts for lyrics plus music).
Complete the application. Enter each author’s name, the title, and the completion year. A single author who is also the sole claimant fills out the shorter form; co-authored works require listing every contributor.
Pay the fee. The system routes payment through Pay.gov and accepts credit cards, debit cards, ACH bank transfers, or a Copyright Office deposit account.¹¹
Upload your deposit file after payment clears.

How Much It Costs

Two standard fees apply to a single-work registration:

$45 if there is one author, that author is also the sole claimant, and the lyrics were not created as a work for hire.
$65 for the standard application, which covers everything else: multiple authors, a claimant who isn’t the author, or work made for hire.¹²

Fees are nonrefundable even if your registration is refused. The same fee applies whether you’re registering lyrics alone or a full composition with music.

Registering a Batch of Unpublished Lyrics

If you have a stack of unpublished lyrics ready to file, the Group Registration of Unpublished Works (GRUW) option covers between two and ten works on one application for a flat $85.¹² The rules are strict:

Every work must be unpublished. No mixing published and unpublished pieces.
Every work must share the same author, or the exact same set of co-authors.
Each work must be uploaded as its own file. Combining several lyrics into one PDF can lead to refusal.¹³

Use the dedicated “Group of Unpublished Works” application in eCO. The standard form does not work for group filings.

Co-Writers, Ownership Shares, and Work for Hire

Most lyrics have more than one writer, and sorting out ownership before you register saves grief later. Under federal law, a “joint work” is one where two or more authors intend their contributions to merge into a single, unified piece.¹⁴ Absent a written agreement, co-authors automatically own equal shares regardless of who did more of the work: 50/50 for two writers, one-third each for three.

That default catches people off guard. Write an entire verse yourself while your co-writer adds one line to the chorus, and you still split ownership evenly unless you agreed otherwise in writing. Fix it with a short collaboration agreement that spells out the percentages before you register. Any split is fine; the point is settling it while everyone is still getting along.

Work for hire is a separate arrangement. If you wrote lyrics as an employee, or you signed a written agreement designating the lyrics as a work made for hire in one of the qualifying categories, the hiring party is the legal author and owner. They file the registration; you have no ownership claim. Staff songwriters at publishers are the common example. Freelance lyricists should read any contract carefully before assuming they own what they wrote.

What Happens After You Submit

You’ll get an email confirmation once the application, fee, and deposit are all in. Then it’s a wait. Electronic claims currently take roughly two and a half months on average to process, and complex or flagged applications take longer. You can check status anytime through your eCO account.

One helpful rule: the effective date of registration is the date the Copyright Office received all three pieces of your submission, not the date the office finishes reviewing.⁵ File everything on March 1, get approved on June 15, and your registration date is still March 1. That earlier date is what counts for the three-month publication window.

Once approved, you receive an official Certificate of Registration. Keep it somewhere safe. It’s the document you’d present in court to prove your copyright.

Fixing Errors After Registration

Spot a mistake on your certificate after it’s issued, like a misspelled name, a missing co-author, or a wrong completion year? File a supplementary registration to correct the public record. It doesn’t replace the original; it links to it and adds the corrected information.¹⁵

The electronic filing fee is $100.¹² Only the author, the copyright claimant, an owner of exclusive rights, or an authorized agent can file one. Tiny typos or an address that already appears correctly elsewhere on the certificate aren’t worth a supplementary filing. Save the fee for errors that could actually cause problems later, like a wrong author name or an incorrect publication status.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 504 – Remedies for Infringement: Damages and Profits
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 US Code 412 – Registration as Prerequisite to Certain Remedies for Infringement
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 US Code 102 – Subject Matter of Copyright: In General
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 US Code 411 – Registration and Civil Infringement Actions
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Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 US Code 410 – Registration of Claim and Issuance of Certificate
6
U.S. Copyright Office. Circular 33 – Works Not Protected by Copyright
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U.S. Copyright Office. Help: Type of Work
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U.S. Copyright Office. Circular 50 – Copyright Registration for Musical Compositions
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U.S. Copyright Office. eCO Acceptable File Types
10
U.S. Copyright Office. Register Your Work
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U.S. Copyright Office. Online Registration Help – Section: Registering a Claim in eCO
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U.S. Copyright Office. Fees
13
U.S. Copyright Office. Group Registration of Unpublished Works (GRUW) FAQ
14
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 101 – Definitions
15
U.S. Copyright Office. Supplementary Registration