Most of the confusion about lyrics comes from one thing: the words and the music are different works, registered under different rules, and the systems that pay for them are not the same system.

The words are a separate work from the music

Section 2(p) defines a musical work as the music excluding any words intended to be sung with it. Read strictly, that leaves the lyrics outside the musical work altogether, as a literary work whose author is the lyricist.

In practice one application carries both. The author is defined separately for each class of work, and a musical work filing names the lyricist as an author alongside the composer: our own granted certificates do exactly that, and describe the registered work as consisting of lyrics and musical composition.

So a lyricist is an author, not a contributor who helped. That word is doing real work, because everything downstream hangs off it.

The two registrations people assume are one

This is the part that costs writers money.

The copyright register and the copyright society are separate. Filing with the Registrar of Copyrights records who authored the work. Notifying the work to IPRS records who gets paid, and in what proportion. They are different submissions, to different bodies, with different forms, and nothing carries one across to the other.

The consequence is blunt: a person can be a named, registered co-author of a song’s musical work and hold no share at all at the society. The registration is perfectly valid. The royalty simply goes to whoever is on the other list.

If you have written words on a released song, the useful question is not “am I credited” but “am I on both registrations, and with what share”. Ask for the diary or registration number of the filing, and ask what split was notified.

The part of the fee that is not negotiable

A buy-out can settle the assignment. It cannot settle the royalty.

The fourth proviso to section 18 makes an author’s right to a share of royalties for the use of a non-film sound recording non-assignable and non-waivable, shared equally with the assignee, and it voids any agreement to the contrary. A clause saying no royalties are payable now or in future is not a hard bargain, it is unenforceable.

That right is administered through the society, which is why the second registration matters as much as the first. Notifying the work to IPRS is how the non-waivable share actually reaches the person who wrote the words.

⚠️ Note the qualifier. The Act treats film and non-film uses differently, and the proviso above is the non-film one. A song written for a film sits under a different clause, so do not carry this across without checking.

Why uncredited ghostwriting breaks more than the credit

Registration records authors. The royalty follows authorship. A writer deliberately left off the credit therefore has no clean route to either, and the filing itself becomes a document that does not describe what happened.

It is not a moral point so much as a structural one: if a song is worth registering, it is worth naming who wrote it. Writing that is credited can be filed, notified and paid on. Writing that is not has to be argued for later, with nothing on paper.

What to get in writing

  • What is assigned, and what is not
  • The fee, and whether it is full and final
  • The credit: the exact wording, and where it appears
  • Confirmation you will be named as an author on the copyright filing
  • Confirmation the work will be notified to the society, with your share stated
  • Who is responsible for actually making both submissions, and by when

Section 19 requires an assignment to be in writing and signed by the assignor, so a document is going to exist regardless. The only question is whether it says the things above.