Originally Posted By: QuestionAsker
Originally Posted By: Brad Williams
........ My dad had one stolen that way once. If you don't know them well, or have any reservations it's best to copywrite first I think. ......


Thanks Brad for the feedback. Just curious, what was the story with your dads song being stolen? How did it happen, and did he see any reimbursement for it?



I worked with another writer many years ago. I was just getting started at the time. He was the founder of a songwriters group in the town I was in at the time. He claimed that he had written the lyric and melody to a very big #1 song and had submitted it to a publisher/record company and heard nothing back. Then one day he heard it on the radio and watched it go to #1 and make a ton of money. This was well before the internet and computers. Rotary phones were still a thing. I'm not so sure that his story was true, but of course the back story fit the situation well. His wife would kind of roll her eyes when he told this story to someone new.

It's possible because at the time, there was only LOC copyright to prove ownership and date of creation. I still have all of the copyright forms for the songs I was writing back then. Many were collections. I should pull those out and see if there was anything actually worth spending the money on back then.

My story....a coincidence I'm sure...... I have a gospel song that I had written and recorded. One day I was listening to the local gospel radio station and heard a song that was eerily close to the song I had written. I wrote it off as a coincidence because at the time, I wasn't posting on line... internet was at best dial up to bulletin boards and I hadn't sent the song out to anyone. That was a strange one. There was no way anyone else could have heard my song and ripped it off.

Last edited by Guitarhacker; 02/18/23 04:20 AM.
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