How to Protect Your Music Before Distribution
- iMusician
- 16 September 2026, Wednesday
Releasing your music is exciting. Protecting it and maintaining clear evidence of ownership is just as important.
iMusician spoke with MusicStart to learn more about why protecting your music matters, what steps artists can take before releasing their work, and what role MusicStart can play in the process.
Copyright: Securing Your Rights From Day One
As an independent artist, you know the rush of a new release. You spend hours tweaking a mix, upload your files, and a few days later, your work is available to listeners around the world. But amid the excitement of a launch, there is another important step worth considering: documenting when your work was created.
Today, someone could potentially take a demo or composition you have posted online, claim it as their own, and try to exploit it commercially. Having proof of when your work was created before sharing or distributing it can therefore be crucial.
In many countries, copyright arises automatically upon creation. As soon as your melody, composition, or lyrics take an original form, the law recognizes you as the rightful owner, and you may automatically receive copyright protection. The challenge is that while your rights may exist from that moment, proving that you created the work can be a different matter.
This is where proof of prior creation comes in. Reliable, dated evidence can help establish that your work existed before an allegedly infringing version and support your claim in the event of copyright infringement.
Let’s dive into the interview.
What is MusicStart?
MusicStart is a 100% digital work-protection service offered by SACEM to musicians globally, whether or not they are SACEM members. It allows creators to establish timestamped proof of prior creation for files such as audio, lyrics, and sheet music using blockchain technology.
After a work is submitted, MusicStart generates a certificate linked to its timestamped blockchain record. This can be used as evidence of the work's existence at a specific point in time in the event of a dispute or alleged plagiarism.
What gap did you see in the existing music protection landscape that led you to create the company?
The main gap was related to the difficulty of proving ownership. In France and many other countries, copyright is automatically established upon creation. However, in the event of a dispute, you must be able to prove when you created the work. Traditional methods (like mailing yourself a registered letter) and standard legal procedures are time-consuming or expensive for independent artists. We wanted to simplify this step using blockchain technology.
If an artist could take away one key reason for protecting their music, what would you want that reason to be?
If an artist could take away only one reason, it would be peace of mind. Protecting your music ensures you retain full control over your art, your image, and your potential revenue.
Artists often associate music protection and ownership with hefty paperwork and complicated, multi-step processes. How does MusicStart simplify this process for independent artists?
We’ve completely eliminated the paperwork. MusicStart is a 100% digital platform designed to be fast and simple. The artist creates an account, drops their files (audio, lyrics, sheet music) into a secure space, and that's it. Our system uses blockchain to create a tamper-proof certificate of prior creation in just a few minutes. It’s as easy as uploading a photo to social media.
Imagine an independent artist has just finished a new song and is preparing to release it. What should they do to protect it before putting it online?
The golden rule is chronological: Protect first, distribute second. Ideally, an artist should get into the habit of protecting their work right from the very first stages of creation (lyrics, sheet music, early demos). The earlier the protection, the more effective it is! Then, as soon as the track takes a tangible form, it can be digitally anchored on MusicStart to secure a timestamped proof of authorship. Once this evidence is in place, the artist can safely move forward with uploading their final file to iMusician or teasing the release on social media.
What mistakes should independent artists avoid?
1. Premature sharing (both public and private): Posting a studio session clip on social media to tease a release, or informally sending demos via WeTransfer or WhatsApp to collaborators (beatmakers, musicians) without any proof of prior creation.
How to avoid it: Get into the habit of protecting your work (even if it's incomplete) before sharing it in any way.
2. Waiting for the track to be 100% finished (The Master): Only wanting to protect the final version of the song. If a theft occurs on a work-in-progress version (a demo), the artist has no evidence.
How to avoid it: Protect your work in stages (first the lyrics, then the guitar/vocal composition, then the final mix).
3. The “small artist” syndrome: Thinking that plagiarism only happens to headliners and postponing the protection step due to a lack of time or money.
How to avoid it: Remember that plagiarism and unauthorized use can affect emerging artists too. Use an accessible service to secure your catalog right from the start.
If an artist discovers that their music has been used without their permission, what should they do first?
The first step is not to panic and to immediately gather evidence of its creation. If they haven't used a dedicated service, the artist must gather all the timestamped traces at their disposal: an email with the demo attached sent to a collaborator, a registered letter they mailed to themselves, the registration of their work with their collective management organization, or even the original session files from their Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) along with their creation dates.
On the other hand, if they have protected their work with MusicStart, the process is much simpler: they can retrieve their certificate, which provides timestamped evidence that they are the original creator and that the work existed on a specific date.
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