All of my songs were written back in the 1970s and 80's - and it occurred to me that might make them more attractive to publishers or a record company to release...
Why?
For some time now it seems that the only way record companies can make money from music is to sue other people for copyright infringement. If my tracks were written so long ago they could not possibly proved to be a problem as far as copyright is concerned as, of course, copyright falls to whoever did it first.
In fact, that might make my tracks more appealing to a record company because then they could use my copyright against anyone who has written a song anything like mine since.
Could happen...
The Big Copyright Scam
You do apparently need to prove the alleged perps heard your song but if you have proof of when it was written they may just settle rather than fight you. I always register new songs with the PRS and I recommend you do too as they are one of the authoritative registrars.
This whole copyright thing has been the scam for some time now. Even Ed Sheeran settles on some pretty vague evidence and 'adds' another songwriter credit just to make it go away.
Ed's just won a big lawsuit over Oh why in Shape of you and he's now saying he will now video himself writing songs to 'prove' he wasn't stealing ideas! Good luck with that.
The fact remains vexatious copyright claims are the reason that the despicable practice of means speculative copyright acquisition is now commonplace.
The other plus of owning old material is that, because record companies are shit scared to release new music, it is very hard and expensive to get any traction with new material. As a musician this must therefore surely make old tracks more attractive (if they're any good) to release as new music - being legally bulletproof.
I know that record company executives read my blog to see what the ordinary musician is thinking (rather than what Rolling Stone is telling them). I know because one of them sent me a turd in the post with a letter in some brown sort of ink saying so!
Copyright speculation
Will these fine human ball sacks buy up old copyrights? They already do.
According to the PRS a couple of my tracks are owned by Sony. How? They must have bought it off my bankrupt record company (who didn't own it either) back in the day. This irks me. Why the fuck should they get any benefit. I have not seen a cent in the 40 years since they 'owned' it.
It's like buying up land. It may seem worthless but 'they ain't making any more of it' so why not speculate that someday it will be worth something.
So hey, you suits sign up my back catalog and get suing why don't cha!