Co-Writing
Many songs today are co-written. Co-writing was the most common ways songs were written throughout the previous century and right up to today.
Tin Pan Alley was where the majority of popular songs were written. It refers to a location in Manhattan on 28th Street between 5th and 6th Avenue. While many songs were written by a single writer most were written by a co-writing team. The typical co-writing team would be an “English as a Second Language” immigrant writing the melody with a native-born speaker writing the lyrics.
Today many songs are co-written. This especially true in Nashville where it’s not uncommon to have three, four or more co-writing a single song.
So are you ready to co-write? Not sure just yet if it’s for you? Let’s talk about how to approach it and what to keep in mind.
Legal Issues
While 99.99% of songs never make a dime there are of course those few that can make generational wealth for the writer(s). So how concerned should you be when you set out to co-write? In my opinion many songwriters are overly concerned about this. Most songs are stolen legally with a bogus contract rather than falsely claiming you’ve written a song that someone else wrote. In fact, it’s often the weakest writers that are most fearful of it. So how concerned should you be about this issue? My advice is not to show up for a co-writing session with a contract asking for a signature from your co-writer. In many cases that would get the session off on the wrong foot. I would recommend instead a verbal agreement that states that whatever you create will be split evenly. I didn’t do this when I co-wrote with a recording artist and later when it was going to be on his album, went through a very unpleasant negotiation.
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Jim Bruno's Songwriting Class 