How long do your publishers take to review your music?

[teleblaster]

I work with three different publishers. They all review material before adding to their catalogs; which I prefer so I know they're keeping the bar high. The turnaround time for them varies. One guy gets back typically within 24 hours, although lately he's been taking up to a week. The other takes 4-6 weeks, and a new company I'm working with has been sitting on my first submission to them since Feb!

I'm cool with the first 2. The last is a bit of a burn. I know this business takes patience and that submit it and forget about it mentality, but I still hate to see my material sitting in limbo for so long. Is this something I need to get over, or is turnaround time something that you folks that have been in this business longer than me take into consideration when dealing with publishers.f

[guscave]

I use to sit around after I submitted a song or was forwarded to a listing and wonder the same thing, however after dealing with different companies with different work-loads and time-tables, I basically don't even think about it anymore. It's definitely a submit it and forget it thing for me.

In a way it's a nice surprise when you don't pay any attention to the time lapse, then after you've forgotten all about it, you get a call from them. :

[mojobone]

Review times can be painfully slow, but given the glacial pace of actual payment once you have a placement, Magic Eightball says signs point to yes, get over it.

[mazz]

Is this something I need to get over

Yes! Sometimes they're gathering material for a certain release and it may take several months before they get everything together and then even longer to get it out on the "street" (hard drive, CD, website, etc.!) For example, I was forwarded to a library and then months later met the library owner at the Road Rally and he said he was still in the process of entering all the metadata for the pieces into his database. Another library I'm associated with took 25 of my pieces and then took 9 months before they showed up on their website!

We tend to think like composers/musicians and it behooves us to put ourselves in the publishers' shoes every once in a while. Pretty scary when you think about how many composers they have to deal with on a day to day basis, isn't it!???

It's human nature to be impatient, but just focus on making great music and getting it to the great publishers. The only thing you have control over at that point is how you deal with the wait.