JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Songwriter Message Forum A few pointers for songwriters

Hello Terry,

The information that I gathered didn't cost any of us a dime. I have been sitting in the shadows of JPF for quite awhile and thought it might be nice to share some info directly from publishers. Yes, it's probably info that many song writers already know, but maybe some don't. I beg to differ with your opinion



This subject alone has opened alot of discussion. And many want to "shoot the messenger" over what I was told from publishers concerning publishing contracts, but I can't change the facts.

Please be patient, I'm trying to go through your whole post bit by bit to try to answer all of the questions.

First of all I don't know what a "sprackle" is and wouldn't know what to do with a whale if I caught one. lol. But I'll move on.

You're right this business is not a charity, but that doesn't mean That one can not share without expecting a reward or return.

You're right there is no free lunch. But I haven't offered lunch. I offered the fine writers to submit their songs to me for a duo that we are getting ready to record. The producer only deals with original songs for clients that he plans to pitch to major labels. I reviewed at least 200 songs, it cost me my time, there were no promises made to any of the writers, with the exception that I would at least listen to their songs, and I did, every single one. The way I look at it, they had paid for their lunch by writing and demoing the songs that they submitted to me. Down the road they're not going to be told "Hey, we could do your demos better". It wasn't my spirit to drum up business.




Now, let me understand what you're saying. You feel that because I have offered a little infomation directly from the source, it's too good to be true? I don't think you're questioning the validity of the information, because you validated that yourself. I nevered offered to do any demos or recordings for free to anyone, so that can't be it. I did offer folks that are members of JPF to have demos done at cost. So let me explain that. We pay each of our musicians $45 per instument per song and a vocalist $25, for a five piece that's $250.00. Music City Music Group's normal charge is $350.00 is this what you're refering to? I know that this may even seem to be high for many. But for this market even our regular rate is below average. I can't make the offer any lower than cost.



You're right .... The players on the site are some of Nashville's finest A list players and used for master sessions. They don't have anything to do with this thread or songwriting. The artist pays for their sessions reguardless of who the writers are. The songwriters never..ever pay for an artist to record their songs. By the time an artist decides to record a songwriter's song, the writer has already invested whatever they are going to invest in the demo that was used to pitch it to the artist.



You're right we do have 2 legit labels, Rejoyce (christian & gospel) and Revved (which cover all other genres)they were created for indy artist strickly to get air play, not for the songwriters unless they are also the artist. A writer can't release a demo that they didn't sing unless they work something out with the singer. The labels are available to our artist at no charge to them. So far we have had 16 artist use the benifit of Revved and 8 on Rejoyce to get attention from radio and all have been successful. If they want to work on distribution that's up to them. But for your assumption that we are seeking unknown songwriters that have potential is way off bases.
1. We are not publishers
2. We have access to all the major publishers and directly to many major songwriters
3. We normally only pitch songwriters that also are artists and our producer is the only one that does that. Not every artist we record gets the offer of a finders agreement, only 4 or 5 a year.



Where in the world did this come from? I never said that we would "shop" publishing deals for songwriters or anything that slightly implied that. Where did you pull that from?

I'm not sure how someone offering to gather direct info for the writers on this forum has raised the questions in this post. There must be parts I have missed because alot of this stuff was never brought up and not implied.