Co-writing with your producer, friends, band mates or [other] professional songwriters is a good thing. But remember–you’re creating a piece of property when you write a song (or record a master for that matter, but that will be the subject of another post). This time that property is intellectual property. Like any other form of property, intellectual property has certain rules of the road that can have some twists, turns and dangerous shoals. You wouldn’t build a house with a partner if you didn’t understand the legal issues of co-owning real estate, and neither should you create a piece of intellectual property with someone without knowing at least a bit about intellectual property law, and particularly the law of copyright.

The other thing you should be clear about is that when you record a song, there are two separate and distinct copyrights in play (no pun intended): the sound recording…