Copyright Registration of Musical Compositions and Sound Recordings 7
Under the Copyright Act, a collective work is considered one work for purposes of registration. A
registration for a collective work covers the copyrightable authorship in the selection, coordination,
or arrangement of the work. A registration for a collective work also covers the individual
copyrightable works that are contained within the collective work if (1) the collective work and the
individual works are owned by the same party, (2) the individual works have not been previously
published or previously registered, and (3) the individual works are not in the public domain.
Accordingly, an applicant may use one application to register a number of musical compositions
and sound recordings as a collective work if the applicant owns the musical compositions and sound
recordings, selected and arranged the musical compositions and sound recordings into a collective
whole, and the musical compositions and sound recordings have not been previously published or
previously registered.
For example, a CD album with multiple tracks that embody musical compositions and sound
recordings is considered a collective work. If the person or entity selecting, coordinating, or
arranging the musical compositions and sound recordings on the album also owns the sound
recordings, which were not previously published or registered, then the album and sound
recordings may be registered with one application as a collective work. If that party also owns the
musical compositions, which were not previously published or registered, then the collective work
registration would also extend to the musical compositions.
By contrast, if the copyright owner of the musical composition is not the copyright owner of the
sound recordings, the musical compositions and sound recordings must be registered separately.
If an author only selects or arranges the songs on an album, but is not the copyright owner of the
component sound recordings or the musical compositions, or if those recordings or compositions
were previously published or registered, that author may still file an application for a collective
work covering only the selection, coordination, and arrangement of the songs on the album. This
might occur, for example, in the case of a “best of ” album or a movie soundtrack album. But in
this situation, the registration in the collective work would not extend to the individual sound
recordings or the musical compositions on the album.
Example
An artist wrote and performed multiple tracks for a published album and determined how to
arrange the compositions on the album. The artist can register this work on one application
as a collective work. The claim may include the individual musical compositions and sound
recordings as well as the selection, coordination, and arrangement of the tracks on the album.
Unit of Publication
The Copyright Office has a narrow registration accommodation for units of publication. A unit of
publication is a physical package that contains a number of separately fixed works that have been
physically bundled together for distribution to the public as a single, integrated unit. The unit of
publication accommodation is meant to solve a very particular problem: the burdens that would
arise if applicants were required to submit, and the Office were required to process, multiple copies
of the same product in order to register different copyrightable elements of that product.
An applicant may register a number of works as a unit of publication only if:
• All of the copyrightable elements are recognizable as self-contained works.
• All of the works claimed in the application are first published as a single unit on the same date.
• The copyright claimant for all of the works claimed in the unit is the same.