The part everyone skips over is the part that matters: you sent it to them.
Most answers to this question are written for someone who found their beat on a release and has no idea how it got there. That is not you. You know how it got there. You have a message thread, a date and a name — a materially different and much better position, and almost nothing written about beat theft is written for it.
So this page is your version: what to save today, what your send is worth, what registering now does and does not get you, where a claim this size realistically goes, and when the honest answer is to stop. It is not legal advice, and it quotes the statutes and the decisions rather than paraphrasing them. For the general map of remedies, that is a different page: someone stole my song — what can I actually do about it.
What should I do in the first hour?
Preserve, in this order. All of it is free and none of it commits you to anything.
1. Stop touching the files. No re-exporting, no re-bouncing, no "just tidying the project folder." Resaving rewrites modification dates on the one set of files whose dates matter, and you cannot get them back.
2. Export the conversation, not a screenshot of it. The thread where you sent the beat — email, DM, Discord, the marketplace's own messages — is the most valuable document you own, and it lives on somebody else's server. Most platforms have a data-export function. Use it today.
3. Capture the release. Screenshot the track page with its date and credits visible, save the URL, note when you looked, and save the audio if you can. Pages get edited and credits get quietly changed.
4. Write down the chain while you still remember it. Who you sent it to, by name. What they do. Who introduced you. Who they were working with at the time. None of that is in any log; it is in your head, and in four years it will not be.
5. Do not accuse anyone yet. Everything you write becomes part of the record, including the parts written while angry.
Why is "I sent it to them" the strongest fact you have?
Because it is the fact most people in your position cannot produce, and its absence is what kills these claims.
A US copyright claim has to establish access. The Ninth Circuit's model civil jury instruction, revised in September 2025, defines it for jurors like this:
"You may find that the defendant [name] had access to the plaintiff [name]'s work if [the defendant [name]] [whoever created the work owned by the defendant [name]] had a reasonable opportunity to [view] [read] [hear] [copy] the plaintiff [name]'s work before the defendant [name]'s work was created."
— Manual of Model Civil Jury Instructions for the District Courts of the Ninth Circuit, Instruction 17.18, "Copyright Infringement—Copying—Access Defined" (revised September 2025)
Opportunity, and sequencing. Sending someone a file, on a date, is exactly the shape of thing that describes.
Now the cold part, because it is the most useful thing on this page. Delivery is not automatically enough, and the reason it fails is usually distance. In Loomis v. Cornish, 836 F.3d 991 (9th Cir. 2016), Will Loomis's band was asked for their song by an A&R representative at UMG Recordings, and sent it:
"In May of 2010, Lee emailed Loomis's mother, Kristin Loomis, who acted as administrative coordinator for the band, to request a copy of Bright Red Chords. The band furnished Lee a copy of the song."
Nobody disputed the delivery. He lost anyway:
"We disagree. On the record before us, there is no evidence of a nexus between Lee and the Domino songwriters that would be sufficient to raise a triable issue of access."
Quoting Jorgensen v. Epic/Sony Records, the court stated the rule it applied: "Bare corporate receipt …, without any allegation of a nexus between the recipients and the alleged infringers, is insufficient to raise a triable issue of access."
Read that slowly, because of what it asks for: a connection between the recipients and the alleged infringers. Loomis's problem was that those were different people and he could not close the gap.
If you sent your beat to the person whose name is on the release, the gap Loomis fell into is not the shape of your file. That is not a promise about how a court would rule — access is a finding made on the whole record. It is an observation about what you have and what he did not. Most people arriving at this question have a suspicion and a coincidence. You have a named human being, a date and a file.
Keep the name. Keep the thread. Keep the reply, especially if it was a no. The fuller account of what courts have credited and rejected on this element is in how to prove someone heard your song.
The case every beatmaker should read before doing anything else
Richardson v. Kharbouch, Nos. 24-1119 & 24-2378 (7th Cir. 16 October 2025), is the closest thing to your situation in the reported case law.
Eddie Richardson was sixteen. He made instrumental hip-hop beats as Hotwire the Producer and put them online. One of them, "Hood Pushin Weight," turned up under a chart-topping French Montana record, "Ain't Worried About Nothin." Judge Jackson-Akiwumi's description of the beat is worth reading for the respect in it: "The track has all the trappings of a successful hip-hop instrumental: deep percussion, rhythmic snare, and melodic detailing."
He contacted the rapper directly, was told to talk to the producer, and the day after he first heard the record he registered his work. He then lost, at summary judgment and again on appeal — and it had nothing to do with whether the beats sound the same. The court agreed that they do:
"We agree with Richardson that HPW's beat, to the naked ear, seems indistinguishable from the beat in AWAN. Yet, opinions and allegations unsupported by facts are not enough to create a genuine factual dispute about whether AWAN duplicated HPW's digital track."
Two things beat him, and you can still do something about both.
He registered the recording, not the composition
The opinion states it in the introduction:
"The class of copyright Richardson obtained protects against duplication of the digital track but permits imitation of the underlying musical composition."
The statute behind that is 17 U.S.C. §114(b):
"The exclusive right of the owner of copyright in a sound recording under clause (1) of section 106 is limited to the right to duplicate the sound recording in the form of phonorecords or copies that directly or indirectly recapture the actual sounds fixed in the recording. … The exclusive rights of the owner of copyright in a sound recording under clauses (1) and (2) of section 106 do not extend to the making or duplication of another sound recording that consists entirely of an independent fixation of other sounds, even though such sounds imitate or simulate those in the copyrighted sound recording."
The practical consequence, in the Seventh Circuit's words: "a sound recording copyright holder must present evidence that the defendant duplicated the specific digital sounds employed in the copyrighted material." Sounding identical is not the test if the recording is all you registered. Somebody replaying your beat, note for note, on their own drums, is doing the thing §114(b) expressly permits against a sound recording registration. The district court found that Richardson "failed to appreciate the technical differences between a sound recording and music composition copyright" — a sentence about almost everyone who makes beats.
Which form fits your particular work is a question for the Copyright Office's guidance or a lawyer, and we are not going to answer it for you. But nobody needs to tell you which one you already used. It is printed on your certificate. Go and look, before anything else on this page.
He posted it; he did not send it
The other half is the half you are on the right side of:
"As to access, Richardson presents no facts about Kharbouch or Rico Love's retrieval of HPW's digital track beyond stating that he (Richardson) posted it on the internet."
quoting the Seventh Circuit's own earlier decision:
"[T]he existence of the plaintiff's copyrighted materials on the Internet, even on a public and 'user-friendly' site, cannot by itself justify an inference that the defendant accessed those materials."
Uploading a beat gives you reach. Sending it to a named person gives you a link in a chain. Richardson had the first, and it cost him the case.
Can I register the beat now, after this has already happened?
Yes, and you should, whatever else you decide. The Copyright Office, in Copyright Basics (Circular 1): "Registration can be made at any time within the life of the copyright." And: "Before an infringement suit may be filed in court, registration (or refusal) is necessary for U.S. works."
So registration is the door, and the door does not close because you are late. What being late costs you is set out in one section. 17 U.S.C. §412, "Registration as prerequisite to certain remedies for infringement":
"In any action under this title … no award of statutory damages or of attorney's fees, as provided by sections 504 and 505, shall be made for—
(1) any infringement of copyright in an unpublished work commenced before the effective date of its registration; or
(2) any infringement of copyright commenced after first publication of the work and before the effective date of its registration, unless such registration is made within three months after the first publication of the work."
The Copyright Office states the same gate from the positive side, in Circular 1: "When registration is made prior to infringement or within three months after publication of a work, a copyright owner is eligible for statutory damages, attorneys' fees, and costs."
Read together: registering now still opens the courthouse door, and still leaves actual damages and the infringer's profits on the table. What it does not do is reach back and hand you statutory damages and fees for an infringement that started before your effective date. That is the whole penalty — worth knowing precisely, because "I didn't register, so I have nothing" is the most common and most expensive misunderstanding in this area.
Current fees: $45 for a single work by a single author-claimant, not for hire; $65 standard; $85 for a group of unpublished works; $65 for a group of works published on an album of music.
Where does a claim this size actually go?
Not, in all likelihood, to a federal courtroom. Of 57,668 federal copyright cases terminated between 1 January 2015 and 31 March 2026, 90.1% ended with no judgment entered and 2.36% reached a contested judgment (Federal Judicial Center, Integrated Data Base — Civil; a census, and copyright generally rather than music specifically).
The one formal forum built for this size of problem is the Copyright Claims Board, a small-claims tribunal inside the US Copyright Office created by the CASE Act. You file online at ccb.gov, with a two-part filing fee of $40 on filing and a further $60 if the proceeding becomes active, and you need a registration application on file first — see §1505(a) for the exact conditions, which require both that a completed application, deposit and fee have been delivered to the Copyright Office and that a certificate has either issued or not been refused. Here is what it can award, in the statute's own words.
17 U.S.C. §1504(e)(1)(D):
"Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a party that pursues any 1 or more claims or counterclaims in any single proceeding before the Copyright Claims Board may not seek or recover in that proceeding a total monetary recovery that exceeds the sum of $30,000, exclusive of any attorneys' fees and costs that may be awarded under section 1506(y)(2)."
§1504(e)(1)(A)(ii)(I) and (II):
"With respect to works timely registered under section 412 … the statutory damages may not exceed $15,000 for each work infringed."
"With respect to works not timely registered under section 412, but eligible for an award of statutory damages under this section, statutory damages may not exceed $7,500 per work infringed, or a total of $15,000 in any 1 proceeding."
The CCB Handbook adds the figure that gets quoted without its qualifier: "The most the CCB can order a respondent to pay in damages is $30,000. In a 'smaller claims' track proceeding, the damages are capped at $5,000."
And the limit that decides whether any of this is real: the other side can simply leave. §1504(a): "Participation in a Copyright Claims Board proceeding shall be on a voluntary basis …" — the subsection continues, and goes on to preserve every party's right to pursue the claim in a district court instead, and to seek a jury trial. Under 37 C.F.R. §223.1 the respondent has 60 days from service to opt out, and "A respondent's opt-out shall result in the dismissal of the claim without prejudice."
Treat the CCB as a genuine option that sometimes does not run.
What about just messaging them?
For a beat, this is frequently the whole story, and there is no shame in it. A demand letter is a written notice: here is my work, here is my registration or application number, here is what you have used, here is what I want — credit, a split, a fee, a takedown — and here is by when. It is filed nowhere and has no official status, and given the 90.1% figure above, it is where most of these disputes actually end. What makes one land is not tone. It is that the other side can see, in ten seconds, that you can produce a dated record predating the dispute. That is your export of the thread. Attach it.
If the copy is on a platform, a DMCA takedown under 17 U.S.C. §512(c)(3)(A) is the fastest lever available. The caution that travels with it is §512(f), which makes a person who "knowingly materially misrepresents" that material is infringing liable for the damages that misrepresentation causes — so do not fire one off at a beat you leased out and forgot about.
The full walkthrough of all three routes, with the statutes quoted, is on the general page: someone stole my song: what can I actually do about it.
When is this worth pursuing, and when is it honestly not?
Nobody in this industry writes the second half of that sentence, so here it is.
| Your situation | What it realistically supports |
|---|---|
| You sent it to the named person on the release, you have the thread with dates, and the use is obvious | The strongest version of this. Register, then a demand letter, then the CCB if they ignore you |
You sent it, but to an intermediary — a manager, a friend of a friend, a beats@ inbox — and someone else made the record |
This is the Loomis shape. The work is closing the gap between recipient and writers, and it is usually the hardest part |
| You have a sound recording registration and they replayed the beat rather than lifting your audio | Read §114(b) and Richardson again before spending money. This is the exact wall Richardson hit |
| The shared part is a common drum pattern, a stock loop, a two-bar 808 figure, or a preset | Weak, and it will not get stronger. Claims built on unprotectable building blocks get thrown out constantly |
| You leased the beat to them under a marketplace contract | Probably a contract question, not an infringement question — see the note on §204(a) below |
| The beat contains an uncleared sample | Get advice before writing to anybody. Your evidence points at you too |
| Nothing of yours is on their record — it just feels similar | Walk away. This is the category that produces fee awards |
On that last row. Bringing a copyright claim is not free of downside. 17 U.S.C. §505: "Except as otherwise provided by this title, the court may also award a reasonable attorney's fee to the prevailing party as part of the costs." The Seventh Circuit, in the same Richardson opinion: "There is a strong presumption in favor of granting fees in copyright infringement cases," quoting Woodhaven Homes & Realty, Inc. v. Hotz: "[P]revailing defendants in copyright cases are presumptively entitled (and strongly so) to recover attorney fees."
Richardson was not made to pay. The Seventh Circuit recorded that "the court found that Richardson's lawsuit was not frivolous, he did not have an improper motivation in filing it, and the claims were not objectively unreasonable," and affirmed that refusal to award fees. But he had to win that argument after losing everything else. Know the risk exists, and take advice from a lawyer, before you file anything.
If you leased the beat, read your own contract first, and then 17 U.S.C. §204(a): "A transfer of copyright ownership, other than by operation of law, is not valid unless an instrument of conveyance, or a note or memorandum of the transfer, is in writing and signed by the owner of the rights conveyed or such owner's duly authorized agent." Marketplace terms usually cap streams, units or the term of the licence. If someone blew past those caps, that is a breach-of-contract conversation with a different shape, and often a better one, because the numbers are already agreed.
What to do differently on the next beat
Keep the sequence — first loop, session file, stems, bounce, in order and undeleted. In Batiste v. Lewis the defendants beat a sampling claim on Ryan Lewis's sworn declaration, which the district court recorded in his own words: "As part of the discovery in this lawsuit, I, at the direction of counsel, turned over all of the audio files I had that documented the process of creating the Macklemore & Lewis Songs." Being able to produce the working archive is what backed the statement up. Date the file before it leaves your machine, not after the argument starts (what a timestamp does and does not establish; on priority specifically, how to prove you wrote a song first). Send to a person and write down who they are — the Loomis gap, which no software captures; the practical version is how to share a demo and get a record that it arrived. And register on the form that matches what you are claiming, because Richardson is the whole argument for it.
Where SendSecure fits, and where it does not
SendSecure records who you sent a music file to, when it was delivered, and when their copy was opened — one record per recipient, with the file version, written on the day of the send. Included in a SongSecure subscription at $9.95 a month or $97 a year. It answers who and when without you excavating a four-year-old inbox.
An open event is a file being fetched. It is not a person hearing a beat. We write opened, never heard, because only one of those is in the log. No delivery record establishes that a recipient listened, understood, remembered or copied anything, or that anyone else at their organisation saw the file — or, for that matter, that the named recipient was the person who opened it. It is not a finding of access — that is a determination a court makes on the whole record, and a delivery record is one piece of evidence a court may weigh toward it. It registers nothing with the Copyright Office. And no reported US music copyright decision we are aware of has assessed a delivery record produced by a service of this kind, ours or anyone's.
The honest baseline: an email you still have is already a delivery record, and a good one. It carries the recipient's own words, which no log ever will. If you keep only one of the two, keep the email.
The short version
You sent it. That is the fact worth protecting today.
Export the thread before the account disappears. Stop resaving the project files. Screenshot the release. Write down who the person was and who they were standing next to.
Then check your certificate, because Richardson lost on the class of registration and not on whether the beats matched. Register now if you have not — §412 costs you statutory damages and fees for what has already happened, and nothing else. Look at the Copyright Claims Board, remembering §1504(a) lets the other side walk. Send the demand letter with the dated thread attached, because that is where nine out of ten of these end.
And know which row of the table is yours. Some of these are worth chasing. Some are a common drum pattern and a bad week, and the kindest thing anyone can tell you is which one you have.
Last updated: 13 August 2026.
Legal disclaimer
This article is informational and is not legal advice. It quotes statutes, regulations, official Copyright Office guidance and decided cases; it does not tell you how any of them apply to your situation, and no reader should act on it without consulting a qualified attorney in the relevant jurisdiction. Every route described here has conditions and exceptions this page does not cover. Copyright law differs by country and changes over time. SongSecure is not a law firm. No record, timestamp or certificate, from SongSecure or anyone else, guarantees any legal outcome.
Sources
Primary authority. Richardson v. Kharbouch, Nos. 24-1119 & 24-2378 (7th Cir. 16 October 2025) (Jackson-Akiwumi, J.) · Loomis v. Cornish, 836 F.3d 991 (9th Cir. 2016) · Jorgensen v. Epic/Sony Records, 351 F.3d 46 (2d Cir. 2003) · Woodhaven Homes & Realty, Inc. v. Hotz, 396 F.3d 822 (7th Cir. 2005), as quoted in Richardson · Design Basics, LLC v. Lexington Homes, Inc., 858 F.3d 1101 (7th Cir. 2017), as quoted in Richardson · Batiste v. Lewis, 976 F.3d 493 (5th Cir. 2020), and the summary-judgment order below, Batiste v. Lewis, No. 2:17-cv-04435 (E.D. La. 23 April 2019), in which Ryan Lewis's sworn declaration is quoted · 17 U.S.C. §§ 114(b), 204(a), 411(a), 412, 505, 512(c)(3), 512(f), 1504(a)–(e), 1505(a) · 37 C.F.R. §223.1.
Official guidance. Manual of Model Civil Jury Instructions for the District Courts of the Ninth Circuit, Instruction 17.18, "Copyright Infringement—Copying—Access Defined" (revised September 2025) · U.S. Copyright Office, Copyright Basics (Circular 1) · U.S. Copyright Office fee schedule (copyright.gov/about/fees.html) · U.S. Copyright Office, Copyright Claims Board Handbook, Damages (ccb.gov/handbook/Damages.pdf), retrieved 13 August 2026 · ccb.gov.
Data. Federal Judicial Center, Integrated Data Base — Civil: 57,668 federal copyright terminations, 1 January 2015 – 31 March 2026; a census, not a sample; copyright generally rather than music specifically.