The time to think about protecting your work is sooner rather than later, before it gets a chance to be copied by someone else. It will serve no purpose if you wait until your work is infringed, as that will be too late. Therefore before giving your songs to other people to listen to or to work with; you must first endeavor to have an official copyright of your work. It is this that gives the legitemate proof that the material truly belongs to you. To make it easy for you to obtain the copyright to your work go to the links we have provided below, or just follow this litttle piece of advice.
Record a copy of your work, put it in a registered envelope and mail it to yourself so that when it goes through the post office it gets that nice little date stamp on it, and never open the envelope until you need to bring it to court.