Plenty of great songs started as someone else's poem. Setting words you love to your own music is an old tradition, but it isn't a free one. A poem is a protected work in the same way a song is, and putting it on streaming platforms without permission can get the release taken down and leave you in a dispute with the author or their family.
Words are protected on their own
Copyright doesn't only cover music. Poems, lyrics and other texts are protected as literary works from the moment they are written, whether or not they were ever published in a book. When you set a poem to music, the result is a song in which the poet is the author of the words and you are the author of the music.
That means the poet, or whoever holds their rights, has a say in whether the song can exist publicly. The same goes for lyrics from another song: lifting a verse from someone else's track and singing it over your music is using their work, not quoting it.
People often ask whether a line or two is fine. There's no reliable safe number. Quotation exceptions in copyright law are narrow, differ from country to country, and rarely cover a line used as the hook of a commercial song. If a borrowed line matters to your song, treat it as something that needs permission.
Getting permission
Who to ask
- A living author: the poet or lyricist themselves, or their publisher or literary agent if they have one.
- An author who has died: their heirs or the estate. Sometimes one person manages the rights, sometimes several heirs share them, sometimes an agency acts for the family. Find out who actually has the authority to agree.
- Lyrics from an existing song: the song's publisher, which you can usually find through collecting society databases.
What the permission should say
Get it in writing, even if it's a short letter or an email exchange. It should cover:
- which text and which song it's for;
- that the recording may be distributed on streaming and download platforms, and used in videos, worldwide;
- whether you may shorten the text, repeat lines or change words;
- how the author will be credited;
- how income from the composition is shared between the words and the music, if at all.
Lena Marsh found a poem on Instagram by a living poet, Iris Dale, and wrote a melody for it the same night. Before recording, she sent Iris the demo and a short message explaining what she wanted to release. Iris agreed by email, asked to be credited as lyricist, and suggested one small change to the chorus. That email is now saved in the same folder as the master.
Public domain basics
Copyright doesn't last forever. Once it expires, a work enters the public domain and anyone can use it without permission. The length of protection depends on the country: commonly it runs for 50 or 70 years after the author's death, usually counted from the end of that calendar year. Some countries have special rules and extensions.
So a poem by a classical poet who died centuries ago is generally free to use. A poem by an author who died thirty years ago is almost certainly still protected. Between those, check the law in your country and in the main countries where your release will be available. If you're not sure, assume it's protected until you know otherwise.
Watch out for one trap: the original may be in the public domain while the version you found is not. A modern edition with an editor's changes, or a recent translation, can carry its own rights.
Translations
Translation creates a new work, and it has its own author. That leads to two situations:
- You want to translate a protected poem yourself. You need the original author's permission to translate it as well as to set it to music.
- You want to use someone else's translation. Even if the original poem is in the public domain, the translator holds rights in their translation. You need their permission, or their heirs', in the usual way.
Credit both: the original poet and the translator, each in the right role.
Credits done properly
Whoever wrote the words is credited as the lyricist, whether the text is protected or in the public domain. Use the author's real name as it's usually written, not a nickname from social media. If you wrote the music, you're the composer. If you changed or added lines with permission, you may be credited as a co-author of the lyrics, but only if that's what you agreed.
Correct credits matter beyond politeness. They decide who is recognised as an author on the platforms and in collecting society registrations, and they're part of what reviewers check. When you submit a release on CULT, you confirm that you own or have permission for everything in it, and the words are part of that.
Before you upload
- You know who wrote the text and who holds the rights today.
- You have written permission, or you've confirmed the text is in the public domain where you're releasing.
- If a translation is involved, the translator's rights are covered too.
- The lyricist, composer and any translator are credited correctly in the metadata.
- The permission is saved where you can find it if a platform or reviewer asks.