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=**How Does a Song Get Copyrighted?**= Many artists have different techniques to copyright their songs. One of these techniques is to send a CD containing the song they want to copyright to themselves in the mail. When you receive the CD in the mail, do not open the letter. This way if someone comes along a year later trying to take credit for that song, the artist who sent it to themselves can prove that they are the artists of that song because of the date on the unopened envelope. This way you will have proof of the date of publication of your song.

But that is just the start, copyrights for music are handled by the Liberty of Congress. To legally copyright a song, you need to send the Liberty of congress three things, the proper application form, the required form, and an audio copy of your music. The next step that will be in the best of your interest would be to register your music with the Copyright Office. In this way you will ensure a better record of proof that you are the owner of the music and you will also get certain rights when it comes to lawsuits.

=**How is Illegal Downloading Impacting the Music Industry?**= The illegal downloading of music is impacting the music industry in a negative way. In recent years, the purchasing of music has sifted. It is now more popular to purchase songs on iTunes than on CD. This is mostly in part because the music technology had changed. Most specifically, the music technology has changed from CD players. The most popular way to listen to music now is on iPods.

Now you would think that because the artists don’t have to pay for the CDs to put their songs on, the artists would make more money. But this is not the case. People have found corrupt ways to get songs from iTunes without paying for them. Artists have to sell a certain number of their songs for it to be considered a hit. Now there are songs with many people listening to them, so they should be a hit but instead, they do not fit the requirements of being a hit because they have not sold enough of the song. This is a problem because if this continues, artists could go bankrupted causing us to no longer have new songs to listen to at all. [] [] [] [] []