Beware of the Sharks!
For the most part, the music business is a pretty nice place. Publishers take half your royalties and give you demos, a draw, and a plugger. Record companies take your songs and give you a few pennies per unit sold. Everybody takes and gives, and everybody is happy. However, some people want to take all your money and give you nothing of any value in return. These people are called “sharks.”
Sharks aren't always easy to recognize. They may have impressive credits, own big studios, and drive expensive cars. What you don't know is that these people may have either exaggerated their accomplishments or fallen out of the loop, and that they use their credentials and studios to separate gullible songwriters from their life savings, which is how they can afford those fancy cars.
When Should I Pay Someone?When should you pay a publisher for a demo? How about never? It's part of the publisher's job to provide front money for demos. For a staff writer, half of this amount is usually recoupable from mechanicals collected by the publisher from the label, but it's never paid directly by the songwriter to the publisher. It's a conflict of interest for a publisher to sell demos or studio time to a songwriter with whom they are doing business as a publisher. Anyone who tries to do this is a shark and not worth your time.
There is one circumstance under which you might receive a legitimate bill from a publisher for a demo. If you, as an unsigned songwriter, co-write a song with a staff writer and that writer's publisher pays a studio for a demo on your song, you owe that publisher your half of demo expenses for that song.
There are many types of sharks. Most companies that advertise in magazines looking for lyrics or poetry are sharks who will get around to asking for money soon enough. Companies that offer to set your lyrics or poetry to music, for a price, are mostly sharks. Think of it this way; someone who wants to set your lyrics to music will, if he or she truly believes in your talent, want a co-write and 50 percent ownership of the song instead of money. Many of these places use the same music beds and melodies on hundreds of lyrics. Publishers usually spot these unoriginal productions in the first few seconds. Your song will then enjoy a brief career as a would-be Frisbee on its way to the trashcan.
Any company that offers to put you on a compilation disc to go to publishers or record companies, for a price, is probably a shark. Are you starting to see a pattern? The only people who should ever ask for money to do something with your song are the studio people and musicians (for making demos) and independent pluggers (for making copies and pitching on your behalf).
