Music copyrights...Lyrics

I live in Ohio. I am in a band. I write all of the "music" in the band. I did not write any of the lyrics. My singer(who wrote all of the lyrics) recently quit the band. We have two songs recorded and they are both on our band page. I do not have access to the band page. Is that legal? Also...In the event I change the lyrics of the songs, will he have copyrights to the songs?
thanks,
-Dave

There's no requirement that the band members have access to the band page.

Were you the SOLE composer or the music and lyrics or did others collaborate?
Are you represented by a publisher or performance rights organization (I'll assume not).

If you are the SOLE composer you have rights now and you will have rights if you put new lyrics on.

If you were one of the composers of the music, replacing the lyrics gives you exclusive rights to your replaced lyrics, but you continue to share ownership with the underlying musical composition.

Performers don't have copyrights to compositions they didn't write. They'll typically (or their assignees) have rights to their particular recordings of the song.

I wrote all of the music(I composed the scores)...I did not write any of the lyrics, however. I am not represented by a publisher. Does it matter that he wrote the lyrics to the songs? In the event I change them, does he still have rights?

Complexities said:

I wrote all of the music(I composed the scores)...I did not write any of the lyrics, however. I am not represented by a publisher. Does it matter that he wrote the lyrics to the songs? In the event I change them, does he still have rights?

Click to expand...

He has rights to his lyrics. If you replace all the stuff he wrote (or helped write), then you have all the rights to the resultant work. Just "changing" them isn't enough. You have to remove what he contributed.

Thank you, FlyingRon. You have helped me tremendously!

Another question about copyrights in song lyrics

I'm in a band and we just created a song using a copyrighted name in our lyrics. Specifically Wal-mart as well as Sam Walton. Can we get sued? or does this fall under free speech and fair use? just to add to it they lyrics are against Wal-mart and say F*** Wal-mart and so on.

It would be best if you started your own thread. Short answer: yes, you can be sued. To get the longer, more accurate answer, please start that new thread

There's no such thing as a "copyrighted name."