JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Songwriter Message Forum Question for experienced writers

Just to be sure I hadn't lost touch with reality somewhere along the way, I decided to go to another trusted 3rd party just to run this all past them and find out if the advice we're giving is off target. I called Danny Arena of Song U. He concurred that you ALWAYS want to get a reversion clause and that they tell all their students to walk away from any deal that doesn't include one. He also said you should give them more than 2 years max and that most actual publishers that are doing anything are working a song for about a month before moving on for good. He said that a tiny publisher might need longer, so a year to two years max may be reasonable if you have good reason to work with the company in question.

I also checked the site of this company where they post a bunch of famous record covers in a VERY misleading attempt to make you think THEY placed songs on all those albums. Sure, if you read it closely they don't "claim" that.. but the average person surfing in would easily think they did. What it does say is that they represent (or represented at one time) some songs by songwriters who have had songs recorded by the artists shown below. Big deal. That's a far cry from actually PLACING songs on those albums. To me, that's a very shady and misleading thing. I have no problem with them showing pictures of artists they are friends with or artists they've met.. but when it's posititioned to look like they've directly done business with each of those artists it's flat out misleading bordering on dishonest.

Add that to everything else and I hate to say it but you're wrong on this one Terri Lynn.

Brian

[This message has been edited by Brian Austin Whitney (edited 05-08-2006).]