Requirements and Instructions for Electronically Submitting a Section 115 Notice of Intention to the Copyright Office

On October 11, 2018, the Orrin G. Hatch–Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act (MMA) was signed into law. In accordance with the new law, the Copyright Office no longer accepts section 115 notices of intention to obtain a compulsory license for making a digital phonorecord delivery of a musical work. The instructions below may still be followed to submit notices of intention to the Office with respect to phonorecords that are not digital phonorecord deliveries (e.g., for CDs, vinyl records, tapes, and other physical media). Please visit the Office’s MMA homepage for more information.


If you wish to electronically file a Notice of Intention (NOI) with the Copyright Office you may do so by following these instructions.


To be eligible for electronic filing:

  • With respect to each nondramatic musical work named in the NOI, the registration records or other public records of the Copyright Office do not identify the copyright owner of such work and include an address for such owner (see 37 CFR 201.18(f)(3)); and
  • You must have a deposit account with the Office which at the time of your filing must contain sufficient funds to pay all applicable fees in total (information about deposit accounts can be found in 37 CFR 201.6(b) and Circular 5 ).

Required Documents

If you are eligible to file electronically, you must submit a:

The cover sheet and template can be found in the Related Information box to the right. Failure to submit either of these documents will result in rejection of your filing.


The cover sheet is a fillable PDF form provided by the Office that must be completed in conformity with the following requirements:

  • A separate cover sheet must accompany each NOI you file;
  • All fields in the cover sheet are required;
  • All information provided in the cover sheet must match the information provided in the corresponding NOI; and
  • The fees specified in the cover sheet must be calculated in accordance with 37 CFR 201.3(e). The current fee is $75 per NOI plus $10 per group of 1-100 additional titles. For example, the fee for an NOI that includes 118 nondramatic musical works would be $95 (Title 1=$75; Titles 2-101=$10; Titles 102-118=$10).

The cover sheet will not be posted on the Office’s public website.


The NOI must:

  • Be created by using the Excel spreadsheet template provided by the Office;
  • Contain all of the information required by the template, in accordance with 37 CFR 201.18(d);
  • For each nondramatic musical work designated in the NOI, contain identical information in the first 13 columns (items A-M); and
  • Have the name of the individual actually submitting the NOI to the Office (either the licensee or the licensee’s duly authorized agent) typed into the attestation required by 37 CFR 201.18(e)(5) (in row 3 of the template).

The NOI will be made available on the Office’s public website.


Requirements for Submitting Your Filing

Please send your completed submission to the Copyright Office via email to [email protected]. Each submission email must conform to the following requirements:

  • Each email must contain attachments of both a cover sheet and a corresponding NOI (no email may contain only a cover sheet or only an NOI on its own);
  • Each cover sheet and NOI pair must be emailed separately (no email may contain more than one cover sheet or NOI);
  • The NOI must be emailed as an Excel file, and must not be converted to PDF or any other file format;
  • The cover sheet and NOI must not be locked or have any protections or restrictions in place (other than what has already been locked by the Office in the template made available on this page); and
  • All emails must be smaller than twenty megabytes. If your submission exceeds this limit, you must split up your NOI and make multiple filings (including additional cover sheets as necessary).

What to Expect After Submission

Shortly after you have submitted the requisite materials, you will receive an email informing you that your submission has been received by the Licensing Division for review. If your submission complies with the procedural requirements detailed in these instructions, the applicable fees will be deducted from the specified deposit account and you will be sent an email confirming that your NOI has been successfully filed with the Office. After being successfully filed, your NOI will be made publicly available on the Office’s website.


Please note that the Office does not analyze NOIs for legal sufficiency, interpret the content of any NOI, or screen NOIs for errors or discrepancies. The Office’s review of your submission is limited solely to whether you have completed and complied with all procedural requirements established by the Office in these instructions.


If your submission fails to comply with any of the Office’s procedural requirements, you will receive an email stating that your submission has been rejected and an explanation of the defect(s). If this occurs, you will need to send a new and complete submission that corrects all issues, as if submitting for the first time. The Office cannot accept partial resubmissions at this time.


If you have any questions, please contact the Licensing Division by telephone at (202) 707-8150 or by email at [email protected].

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