Originally Posted by: snojonesSo I have an opportunity in which I might sell a song to a name band. It would be the first time I have sold a song and I am unsure just what is a reasonable deal. Should I just be glad to have some interset in my work? Or should I buy a new house on the big buck that will surely follow the signing of the contract? What is the market norm? Any info about this process would be of great interest to me.

It depends on what is termed as 'selling a song'. Is it an outright sale, in that when they tender cash, you've signed away all rights to that song's sale? Or, are they going to use the song and you received payment based on the number of sales?

This is important to know. Publishing is a tricky business. If you sell them the song for 5 grand outright and they sell twenty million albums, you have 5 grand. In that same scenario of twenty million albums but you are paid publishing by per sale of the song, you may see a considerable amount of cash.

Anyone that's been in the music business for long enough will tell you that the real money is in publishing for the reasons above. It is very important to understand publishing in the music business.

It's been a while since I've been around publishing but it used to be that you would get 2 cents a minute for any given song you owned the publishing for. So a three minute song is worth 6 cents. Think about what the equates to in large sales.

Before you get dollars and houses bought (like you were joking about in your post), it is still tricky waters to navigate. You need to create a publishing company through which you will get paid and establish who will collect those royalties for you (i.e. - Harry Fox ).

Before selling a song, spend some time reading up on the pitfalls of music publishing. If you have songs good enough to sell, it will save you headaches and lost money.