Acceptable File Types for Copyright Registration

Please click here for a complete and up-to-date list of acceptable file types for submitting deposits to the United States Copyright Office.

If you submit a file type that is not listed, registration may be refused and you may be required to submit an acceptable file type that can be opened by the Copyright Office. Your effective date of registration will not be established until the Copyright Office receives an acceptable file type that can be opened and examined by the Office. Each file submitted must not exceed 500 mb.

The following is a quick reference for the most common music file types accepted by the USCO.

Sound Recordings

• .aif, .aiff (Audio Interchange File Format)
• .au (Audio File)
• .mp3 (MP3 Audio File or Layer 3 Audio Compression)
• .ra, .ram (Real Audio File)
• .rmi (Resource Interchangable File Format)
• .wav (Windows Wave Sound File)
• .wma (Windows Media Audio File)
• .mp4, .m4a,

Image / Print

• .bmp (Bitmap Image)
• .gif, .giff (Graphics Interchange Format)
• .jpg, .jpeg, .jfif (Joint Photographic Experts Group)
• .pdf (Portable Document Format)
• .pic, .pict (Picture File)
• .png (Portable Network Graphic)
• .psd (Photoshop Document)
• .pub (Microsoft Publisher)
• .tif, .tiff (Tagged Image File Format)
• .wmf (Windows Metafile)
• .doc (Microsoft Word Document)
• .docx (Microsoft Word Open XML Document)
• .htm, .html (HyperText Markup Language)
• .pdf (Portable Document Format)
• .rtf (Rich Text Document)
• .txt (Text File)

Please note that music engraving file types such as those for MusicXML, Finale, Sibelius, etc. are not currently accepted by the USCO for deposit.