Are music lyrics copyrighted?
I tried to find copyright information about music lyrics, but it is too confusing, because it is related to the usage.
There are lots of websites providing lyrics, but it seems they are somehow illegal (though no complaint against them). Most of them put copyright notice that the copyright holder is the owner, and some indicate that the lyrics have been contributed by users (probably claiming that they have not been copied from the commercial CD).
However, the case of copyright for published materials like books is more serious. Consider a book about music, is it needed to obtain copyright permission for including a song lyric?
It is popular to translate the lyrics of a song to another language, and the final book contains the original lyrics and its translation.
Is copyright permission needed, or it is treated as referenced materials (no need for copyright permission as we are referring to/citing the original work). Moreover, the main part of a song is its music rather than lyrics.
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While I am not a lawyer, if you purchase a physical CD (bit of a rarity these days, I know) and look at the booklet which has the liner notes, you should see copyright notices for each song. If lyrics have been provided, the notice will be at the end of each set of lyrics. (KISS used to copyright theirs under an entity called "Opporknockity Tunes," which always made me laugh.)
And yes, you would need permission to quote a song lyric in a book. Look at the frontspiece for Stephen King's novel The Stand, and you'll see the copyright and permissions notes for all the songs he references.
As far as "the main part of a song is its music rather than lyrics," I don't think that's true — you can copyright an a cappella song, which uses no musical instruments beyond the human voice.
I don't know about translations.
As a general rule, if you are referencing or using someone else's work in yours, and yours is for profit in any capacity, then you should make an effort to get permission first.
Websites just listing lyrics are more of a gray area, since the only "profit" is from the ads, but if the person on the page is using an ad blocker, then even that source of revenue is eliminated.
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Yes you require permission from the copyright holder of the lyrics in question to reproduce them in a book. It is not treated as referenced materials.
Whether you intend to profit from the book or wherever you intend to reproduce the lyrics is entirely irrelevant.
The copyright holder holds the rights to those lyrics and he/she/they can stop you from reproducing them without his/her/their permission.
If the lyrics are demonstrably in the public domain you can reproduce them without permission, but not copyrighted ones.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/6802. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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