Pitching a Song You've Already Self-Published

[Jack]

This is something I still don't understand exactly and I'm sure some of you veterans could educate me on it.

I have put out a few solo albums in the past. Since I primarily use CD Baby for digital distribution, all of those songs have been on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, etc for quite some time. Since it was just me writing/producing/publishing, I still own all the rights to everything.

My questions is, what happens if I pitch one of these songs to a deal in which the publisher would take over the publisher's share? Would I just need to re-title the song for their purposes, or would I have to pull the song from all the digital retailers that are still selling it? Or something else?

Any light you could shed on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[Russell Landwehr]

Hi, Jack.

If it is for non-exclusive sync use, then a retitle will take care of that.

If you are placing it with an Exclusive Library, then you would probably need to carve out the mechanicals and just assign them the exclusive sync rights. It's not unheard of for Exclusive libraries to word the contract so than an artists can still continue to sell their works as CDs and Downloads.

Not sure how airplay would impact this.

Russell

[Jack]

Awesome. Great info. Thank you!