For example: The Beatles, Elton John, Madonna, etc. If you have multiple covers in your release then list each artist in the ‘C Line’ one after the other, separated by commas. For example, if you were to cover Don’t Let Me Down then you would need to list ‘The Beatles’ and not name ‘John Lennon, George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr’. Make sure that you credit the name of the performing artist and not the composers. This will be under Album Details when uploading your release through RouteNote. You must credit the original artist in the ‘C Line’ (Composition Copyright) of the album details. When you upload your release you will need to format it slightly differently for a cover release to ensure that the original artist is credited correctly. You can acquire licenses for the US and associated territories from Affordable Song Licensing or from the Harry Fox Agency (HFA) for distribution in these territories on all services. It cannot use any samples from the original recording, and cannot alter the melody, lyrics or original composition. This means that you can distribute your covers to these services worldwide. However Spotify, Deezer, Pandora, iHeartRadio, Saavn, Nuuday, Anghami, Tidal, and KKBox pay for their own licenses for cover songs. You will need to exclude these territories to distribute your release to the rest of the world unless you have acquired a mechanical license to release a cover of the song(s) you have recorded. For releasing cover songs online you don’t need a license and can just upload it and release it.

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