Posted By trsf on 05/04/2007 1:16 AM
What does the winner get, anyway? If it's just recognition, that can't be much of an incentive; I can't imagine that having the winning entry alone would be enough of a career boost. Is there a decent amount of prize money involved? Royalties? I'd want the chance to work shoulder-to-shoulder with top songwriters, arrangers, and artists in the industry, or maybe a guaranteed number of songs to write on a major artist's album.

And what happens if one of the finalists pulls a Taylor and refuses to sing one of the winning entries?




The winner is supposed to get a $10,000 advance--plus any royalties made (later in the year) on the success of the single. That's far from bad...especially when the success of the song is guaranteed. All the prior 'AI' singles went to #1. Though that success is probably relative when you realize the #1's were only for one week...and then plummeted like an anvil. Only the media hype gets those cheesy singles to the top.  But, for the songwriter, that would mean probably a cool million or more made in royalties by the end of the year. Not bad for a starting songwriter. You even get to put "hottest in the country" next to your songwriter name.

Ok, we have the good parts out of the way. The catches were numerous...if confusing with all the legalese. To be honest, I read the contract thoroughly and didn't like everything I read. That didn't dictate my decision to not submit this year, but it might affect what I do with the contest next year if I decided to submit the same song (or a different one) next time. The biggest negative that was spelled out to me was that 'AI' retains ownership of your song (in fact ALL in the Top 20) for 10 years. Of course, some on the pro side say that could be good...considering 19E might pick from that reserve to give a song to one of their other artists on the roster. That's certainly a possibility I didn't think of before. The immediate general consensus was, however, that your song would be sitting gathering dust in the 19E file bin for a decade when you could be out promoting it elsewhere.

There were some other minor details that I didn't quite understand 100% because of the usual obfuscating way of writing contract legalese. They did have an email address where you could ask questions about it though. But if it's a legal question, I doubt it'd be answered just by email.

Outside of the negatives, I think it's still worth doing. The Top 20 songs are exposed now to the public on 'AI's site too--which would get the notice of other artists who may want to get dibs on that material. I sort of doubt many artists would want to sing more than half of the Top 20 chosen on that list. Unless it's an inspirational type of album--most of those songs are cookie-cutter power ballads. As I said above, only two REALLY stand out as something original. I guess there's a few of the power ballads that would still work well with a decent singer such as Jordin or Melinda.

One thing about it: You're not signing your entire career to 19E. You can still write other songs and market them elsewhere. It's only the one song you gave them for the contest that they own the rights to.

Oh, and if Jordin, Melinda or Blake refused to sing the winning song...they're only dissing the public who voted it in for them. Hopefully the public can pick a song better than the 'AI' producers can.