How can I express/show my songs to people without the fear of having it stolen?

This doesn’t mean it won’t be stolen….High profile musicians have their material stolen all the time. But it will protect you if you find out someone has and used your material .

How to get discovered …..You Tube has become one of the cheapest and most effective ways of getting out there and noticed.

I advise you to post a license with it as soon as you post it anywhere. Look at http://funadvice.com/r/bmunhpb9gqe and find what you like there. Then post your song, for example on youtube and put the license into the video description.

“This song was written in 2011 by . I publish it under the creative commons license. You are permitted to save the song to your hard disk and to copy it for your friends. If you pass it on, you must pass this license text on with it. You are not permitted to publish your own version of my song without my consent. You are not permitted to include my song or parts of my song into audio and video files of your own.”

This, of course, doesn’t make sure that people don’t steal your song. But if someone does, you can sue them and have real chances of winning. So music producers probably won’t touch the stuff without contacting you and making you a monetary offer first.

Rarely does anyone actually steal a song, but what they will do is steal your idea and some of your lyrics and write another song. Outside of “official” copyrights, some writers use what is called a poor man’s copyright which is this: seal a copy of the song in an envelope and mail it to yourself. Leave the envelope sealed and never open it. The postmark date on the mail is your copyright date.

I had this same problem its called the penny copyright. You take the song you wrote and mail it to yourself. Put the title of the song on the closure piece so you won’t have to open it until you get to court. My cousin does it to the band’s music.

Not really in court the others can argue they had it before her. Even though recorded its hearsay. Unless she has a federal hardcopy showing date the otherside will win. With a penny copyright she has proof from the post office that she wrote it on that specific date and no one can say otherwise.

You can copyright your music. Even if you do than that is no guaranty. My nephew wrote a song, copyrighted it, and then at a concert gave a CD of his songs to his favorite musician. Not knowing the song was copyrighted the famous musician recorded the song on his next album with no credit or royalties. My nephew talked to a lawyer and to tell the truth getting credited and compensated for his song was so much hassle he gave up.