Tim,

Man, you know how to open up the proverbial can of worms. hard to know where to start. First of all glad you met Kevin. he is a good guy. In anything with demos, check out what other people do, check around, and go slow.

Since you are new here and just getting to know me, I will try to fill in a little about myself to save time. I have been in Nashville 22 years, the majority of that I was after the record deals, the big cuts, the publishing stuff, normal things. I had five major cuts, but no singles, opened a lot of concerts,became a bit of a known quantity and wrote with a lot of hit writers. But never kicked into high gear. I became the patron saint of the "almost there."

About ten years ago, NSAI and other people asked me to start teaching and mentoring and that has reinvigorated my life and career.

I tell you this because for all the talk of process, follow through, the "Nashville method". etc. I am really not that motivated by "getting songs to the really famous person"or however you want to phrase it. As in many things in life, like winning the lottery, there would be positives to it, mostly that I would charge more for my services than I do now. But in the overall perspective of life. there are many things that reward me just as much.

So no, I don't feel that the end all is getting it to that famous person. That might be a by product, but only one. and fame is very fleeting and the money is NEVER what you would think it would be. EVER.

What is important is touching people's lives. and in order to do that now, getting those quality demos, being a solid performer, networking and building fans and friends, using the gifts you have been fortunate to get is all part of that.

Protection of songs are a pretty difficult concept. With literally billions of songs out there it is nearly impossible to come up with a truely original idea. One of the most eye opening of my work with other writers, are taking them to tons of writers nights, and those ideas of theres that they think are SO UNIQUE, the ones they spent hundreds of dollars getting copyrights on, the ones that they swore WERE BIG HITS, are actually just very average and they hear them written by dozens of other writers over the course of a night.

So how do you protect yourself? Technically, due to the Copyright act of 1973, you are protected from the "moment the pen leaves the paper." If you post it on forums, have paperwork, demos, etc. You are actually recording your work. Today with the current technology, there are other ways to do it.

The reality is that most publishers never copyright songs until they are ready to be commerically released. My theory is that if you get known, write with a lot of people, and have a LOT of activity going on around you, that puts you in proximaty of people like publishers, who will do all of that legally and effectively.

But the other side of the reality is that proving a copyright infringement lawsuit is so hard to do there are very few that have ever reached the point of fruition. and the only people that make money are trial attorneys.
What happens is you start to have so many songs that if something comes out ahead of you, you go to other songs. YOu are not as tied to anyone thing and you don't put all your eggs in one basket.

But you have to make your own decisions. No one can tell you what to do. I try to get people to see the bigger picture, not waste time or money on things that are usually not that big a deal. But I lay out information. It is up to them how to use it.

Mine is one opinion. Get many more.

MAB