Yo Thank you!! Really appreciate that. I'm looking forward to building with you and the rest of this community

Hi Thea! I'm not (quite) a lawyer, but from what I know about IP Law, you generally have the rights over your name or the name of your business once you begin to use it in commerce (putting music out, selling merchandise, doing shows, making money in any way). Copyright law is similar insofar as once you fix the expression in a tangible medium (write it, record it, video it, draw it), you have a common-law copyright over it. It becomes critically important when there are disputes over who used it first. You cannot file an infringement lawsuit over a copyright or a trademark unless it's registered. So for emerging artists, I think putting your work into commerce and tracking when you did so is the critical first step. While registration doesn't have to be the most expensive process, it can be for a variety of budgets. Allowing yourself the opportunity to make some revenue from that work and then using that revenue to purchase registration may be a good process for many. Please let me know if this aligns with the research you've done on this topic. Happy to discuss this more!