: How could I share my lyrics? I've been writing lyrics for quite sometime now (at-least five years). Although there have been several of those moments when I've thought I'd have an act for music

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If you're looking for a place to share lyrics, I've created a platform that's just for that.
www.rappad.co

It also helps you in the creative process of writing lyrics online - it's a pretty neat tool that has a great community behind it.

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Whether to give away or sell your work depends on your resources and the goals you have for your work. Here is how I would approach the situation were I in your place:

I'd release my best work under a Creative Commons by-sa or by-sa-nc license.

This helps your work gain exposure, and gives something to the community, without sacrificing ownership of your work. With a by-sa (attribution, share-alike) license, others may use your work in any way that they like but if they use it to create another work (say, they record a performance that uses your lyrics), they must release it under the same terms you did -- AND give you credit in a manner you have specified. This way, every use of your work gains you exposure, and you can in turn use, for example, the melody someone else wrote to go with your lyrics (just give them credit).

Additionally, you still own your work, so if someone would like to use it on different terms (like a company wishing to use it in a product they will not release under Creative Commons) they must receive specific permission from you (and, if you like, payment of some kind that you negotiate).

If you are against any use of your work for profit without specific permission/payment, you can instead opt for the by-sa-nc (attribution, share-alike, non-commercial) license. This is similar to the by-sa license above, except that any for-profit use requires specific permission from you.

Once it's released, I'd promote the heck out of it.

The Creative Commons site and your friends here at writers.SE can offer great tips on specifics. Just do whatever you can to become more visible. This can lead to paid licensing of your existing work, commissions to do new work, opportunities to market non-cc-licensed work, or just a beer from an appreciative user of your stuff every now and again. Either way, in my humble opinion, getting it out there is better than keeping it in a drawer.

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Regarding selling your lyrics, this is apparently not how the music industry works.

I came across this interesting article written by an Emmy-nominated song writer, which warns against the idea of selling your lyrics: www.songmd.com/selling-songs-selling-lyrics.shtml

Selling lyrics is never done in the
legitimate music business. There are
smarmy scumbags in every business who
will gladly tell you what you want to
hear for a price, so if someone offers
you a contract for the purpose of
selling lyrics, tear it up.
Immediately. It might feel good for a
day or so to be “wanted”, it might
feel great to have someone finally
“like” something you’ve created, but
it will feel awful forever when you
realize you’ve been taken by a shark.
Buying lyrics and selling lyrics is
never, ever done in the real music
business.

Marketing lyrics is just like
marketing songs: you write a lyric,
you find a composer to set it to
music, you record the song
professionally and competitively, then
you set out to market the finished
song, which includes pitching your
work to music publishers and A & R
people at record labels, who, in turn,
pitch your songs to singers and bands
looking for hits in your genre. When
your songs are recorded, you receive
quarterly royalties for each copy
sold, as well as performance royalties
from countries all over the world
based on the number of times your
songs are performed for profit on
radio stations, online, in
commercials, in movies, and TV shows.

As for sharing your lyrics, there seem to be a number of forums on-line geared towards this purpose. An example would be something like deepundergroundpoetry.com/ There are probably many others out there (just Google for something like "share lyrics poetry" or something similar).

I personally wouldn't recommend giving your lyrics away, as they're yours. You never know when you may want to use something you've written down, and you also never know what someone may do with your lyrics. If you're thinking of sharing, and want other people to use your work, but to still control it to a degree, consider attaching some "copyleft" to it, perhaps something like a Creative Commons license: www.creativecommons.org

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