As a songwriter who is looking for other artists to record your songs you have two main options:
Getting them signed with a publisher or pitching them directly to the artists, their producers or managers. Both come with different advantages and benefits, please decide for yourself.
Upsides of working with a music publisher:
- a publisher is your one-stop with many industry contacts and a certain influence
- a publisher polishes the door knobs for you
- a publisher can be well respected by record companies and music producers because he pre-filters song submissions and forwards only professional material
Downsides of working with a music publisher:
- a publisher may pitch songs by other writers first
- a publisher decides in his sole discretion which songs to pitch and may leave your ‘hit’ out due to personal preferences
- your songs gather dust on the publisher’s shelf, so all the legwork (pitching etc.) falls back to you while your publisher functions only as a collecting company
- available publishing rights are often an incentive for producers and labels to make extra revenue. If your song is already signed to a publisher, that incentive will not be available
Upsides of working directly with music producers:
- music producers search their own song databases first before they look for outside material (e.g. from music publishers)
- music producers are creative and can imagine your song in different musical styles
- music producers know what they are looking for and should be happy to tell you
- you can get direct feedback about possible changes etc. from the person in charge
- if you haven’t signed your song to a publisher yet, the producer might see this as an incentive to use your song and cash in on the publisher’s share by publishing your song through his/her own label
Downsides of working directly with music producers:
- you will have to seek, establish and maintain contacts and relationships with a larger number of music producers yourself
- you will have to do the leg- and saleswork yourself and thus lose creative time
The direct route without the middle man seems to be more efficient, but it also involves a lot more work than working with a publisher. However, many songwriters keep pitching their songs even when they have a publishing deal but they just don’t want to rely solely on that one company. This being said, offering your publishing rights to a producer who’s interested in your music can become the ace up your sleeve.
Don’t forget to copyright your songs before you submit them.
– Julian Angel
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