Hey Donna, I thought I'd jump into the conversation to give you my take on this being on 'the other side' of the business ;-)

I don't know the exact details of how Mr. X got you to contact him and what was part of the deal other than the production. If he was upfront with you saying that the fee will give you a production and nothing else, fair play. It would be an expensive production, but as long as he doesn't make any empty promises I would say it was an expensive but legit deal.

However, being in music production myself, I know that many production companies promise to 'plug' songs, or act as your 'publisher' if you go with them and in most cases, this is probably nothing but a marketing trick to lurk you in to buying the production for $$$. Some might really have the contacts and can connect you with someone, but they wouldn't be dealing with unknown songwriters online. Their client list should be long enough with established writers to be honest.

Why do they go that route? Because it's in demand. You can't believe how many potential clients knock on our door (virtually, we are online, but you get the message) asking if they choose us to produce their song, will we pitch it for them. The answer is always the same: No, we won't. We make it clear that they pay for the production, receive a professional produced song and then they're on their own. We won't get involved in pitching, promoting etc. their songs. You know what happens in most cases? They turn around and go to the next company which promise them to make them a star only to be disappointed in the end. I'm fine with that, because the ones that do stick with us will get exactly what we promise. I wouldn't know how to explain why Rihanna ended up not listening to the song we produced lol.

As Colin said, only the top few of any highly competitive business actually make a decent living with what they do. If that's your goal, you do need well produced songs, I think nobody will deny this. Will someone just give you a major placement? Probably not, you will have to do the leg work yourself.

To answer your question about if it's legit to change the melody to an existing tune? Well, it's been done many times and I don't see anything wrong with it. Often times, the lyrics are great but the melody not very catchy, so it makes sense to change. What I don't get is, you said: "X was highly enthusiastic about the two songs in particular." So, why did he want to change it? Why not simply produce it with the same melody but a different production. I mean, if everyone is happy with the composition and melody, but the song is a Country tune, but he wants to produce a pop tune, well than produce a pop tune, but without changing the melody, take a fee for the production and leave the copyright to whoever wrote the lyrics and composed the music. Once you place the song with an artists, the list of "collaborators" will grow at that stage anyway most likely by the name of the singer and producer of the final version to be released ;-)

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