Do Not Pay A Publisher For Re-recording!

I recently received an email from a songwriter who had been offered a "contract" with a publisher. Part of that contract required her to pay for a re-recording of her song.

If a so-called publisher wants you to give them money for ANYTHING, run the other way! This is not standard practice. A publisher who is interested in your song will send you a single song contract that will give them permission to take your song and pitch it to artists or bands for a period of time. There should be a reversion clause that essentially gives you all of the rights back after a period of time if the song has not been successfully signed to anyone. And that's it!

There are people out there who want to take advantage of newer songwriters who don't know any better. Songwriters are flattered when they get a contract of any kind, and often don't know how it's supposed to work, so they'll go ahead and pay for the "re-recording" thinking that this gives them a better chance to have the song picked up. It's all baloney.

Arm yourself with knowledge! Before embarking on any business venture, you'd want to learn about that business, right? Well, song publishing is a business and you also need to know how it works before you embark on contacting publishers with your songs.

If you want to learn more about publishing and how it works, I have an article called "Publishing: A Brief Beginner's Guide" that'll give you a little bit of an idea.  You might also consider picking up a copy of Songwriter's Market. It's not only filled with publishers looking for songs, but there are a lot of educational articles that are worth reading.

The general rule of thumb is that if anyone asks you for money, they are not legitimate.  Also, if you can afford to, have a contract read by an entertainment lawyer so you know for sure what you're getting yourself into.

IJ 

Inhale, Exhale

News Bulletin:  I have been working on a song.  You might think "big deal, you write songs", but this is the first time in a long time that I have really focused on my own songwriting.  I found a little piece of a guitar progression that I had recorded maybe a year or two ago on my handy dandy mp3 recorder, and it struck me as interesting so I decided to go further with it.  That sounds easy enough, but it hasn't been.

I realize that I am very distracted by many things during the day whether it's reading emails, checking on stocks, prepping for my students, teaching, making calls;  and the list goes on.  The majority of my songwriting "life", I didn't have the same distractions.  I used to just sit in my bedroom on my bed and write.  So I decided that in order to really give it the attention it needs, I was going to turn everything off for an hour a day including the tv, phones, computers, etc. and just sit with my guitar in front of a piece of paper.  I've done this a few times now and have had mediocre results.

Song Censorship

Recently in Canada, a non-governmental organization called the CBSC (Canadian Broadcast Standards Commission) received a complaint from a person in Eastern Canada about the 1985 Dire Straits hit “Money For Nothing”.  The complaint was in regards to the use of the word faggot which appears three times in the lyric:

See the little faggot with the earring and the makeup
Yeah buddy that’s his own hair
That little faggot got his own jet airplane
That little faggot he’s a millionaire

Of course, if you had never heard the song or read the lyrics before, taking the lyric out of context like that might lead you to agree with the complaint.  In my opinion, the listener had absolutely no understanding of the song’s story or meaning and simply heard that word repeated, and so decided to drag the whole song through the mud, and the CBSC through months of unnecessary committee meetings.  How silly.

Image via Wikipedia

This reminds me somewhat of the decision made by Clear Channel in the aftermath of 9/11 to ban a list of songs from its stations, including the John Lennon song “Imagine” apparently because of this line in the lyric:  “Imagine no religion”.  Absolute silliness.

Now don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of songs I’d like to see banned from the radio.  How about this lyric by Ice Cube from the song “Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It“:

Ain’t nothing like man on that you knew on the corner
See ’em come up and fuck up the owner
See ’em throw up Westside California
Nigga I’m hot as Phoenix Arizona

I’m Utah I got multiple bitches
It’s a new law keep a hold of yo riches
Dumb nigga don’t spend it as soon as you get it
And recognize I’m a captain and you a lieutenant

…as far as Gangsta Rap is concerned, there are many, many offensive lyrics.  And how about some of those blatantly sexual music videos where scantily clad girls are basically mimicking sexual acts for all the little kids to see?  Yep, there are plenty of things out there I don’t want to hear or see.

But that is the whole point; I have a choice.  I certainly don’t want small children to be exposed to that garbage, but I am an adult and I can choose what I do or don’t listen to or watch.  I don’t want someone else making that decision for me and that’s why I don’t like censorship of any kind.

The CBSC has its purpose.  It was created by Canada’s private broadcasters to administer standards that were also created by those broadcasters.   I think it’s important to have oversight and to have a body to complain to when it comes to what is being broadcast.  For example, radio and television stations have to be careful about their graphic content.  If, for instance, a television station is airing news footage of a particularly violent crime scene, they have to be careful about what they show the general public, and it’s important to have standards in place to know where to draw the line.

Censorship has always been a contentious issue, and popular music has had its fair share of arguments.  When Elvis Presley made his third appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in January of 1957 (if you don’t know about the Ed Sullivan Show, you are much younger than me  ), he was shot only from the waist up because of complaints in earlier appearances where he “suggestively” gyrated his hips while singing.

On the same show and ten years later, Rolling Stones‘ Mick Jagger was forced to change his lyrics from Let’s Spend the Night Together to “let’s spend some time together.”  Jagger rolled his eyes as he sang the newly censored lyrics and everyone had a good laugh.  And we laugh now at the idea that lyrics suggesting spending the night together would somehow induce some kind of wild teenage behaviour, but popular music continues to push the boundaries when it comes to sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll.

In the end, it is to an artist’s and record label’s financial delight when a song creates controversy because it only draws more attention to it.  However, in this case, because “Money For Nothing” has been on the radio airwaves for 25 years, the CBSC has only made itself out to be foolish.  And whimp-ish.  All because one person didn’t really understand the lyrics.

IJ