JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Songwriter Message Forum What is the reality behind selling lyrics in Nashville?

maybe I need a dictionary

I said Sam should be AWARE of this.
I did not say Sam needed to BEWARE of anything.

As far as what you are offering Polly;
If it is a DEMO it cannot be released for sale, cannot be sold as digital downloads or reproduced on CD's or any other medium. That is why DEMO's are called DEMO. Demo studios are paid for the work they do. They also are not given cowrite or copyright to any of the completed song. They have already been paid for their service. They have no claim to future royalties. There is nothing wrong with that. It is an accepted and valuable service to songwriters. Even the ones who can write their own melodies.

Collaborators on the other hand do get cowrites. They get future royalties. How it is split up is up to the collaborators. If you and Haze are working as collaborators on these songs and get cowrite status that is perfectly ok..As it should be

Personally I would not pay anyone for collaborating on a song AND give them a share of any future Royalties. It is one or the other.


I'll add one thing
The last DEMO I had done cost me $150.00
It was Charted before the studio session. I assume that took about 30 minutes.
The Demo session took about 40 minutes. The musicians never saw the song before the session. The vocalist did the song in two takes (about twenty minutes, I was there) it was $50.00
All of the musicians where A List Professionals with credentials as long as your arm. Including tracks on dozens of number one hits.
All told it probably involved about 6 hours DEMO time.
It was well worth the $150.00 and I probably should have paid more
The Lyric took me MONTHS and several rewrites with Professional critiques which I paid for.

I did provide the melody so no cowrites were given.