Conventional wisdom in the world these days says "NEVER give away freely what you can sell and make money on". I believe that we can be slightly more civilized than this - help me prove it.

I am posting songtexts and other copyright materials here together with the accumulated knowledge of many, many years work. I could put it in a book and sell it but I would rather share it in this way, for non-commercial use, with those who will find it useful.

There is currently a campaign on behalf of some music publishers to prevent song lyrics being exchanged via websites. Personally, I think that they are being terribly shortsighted and foolish, as it seems to me that such dissemination is more likely to increase rather than reduce their revenues given that sheet music sales are virtually a historic oddity and the more people who perform songs the more money they will receive, but until copyright law is changed to take account of reality, the law is on their side and therefore there are songs I have recorded which I have not included here.

As the publishers of such songs have already made money from royalties from sales of my recordings, I do quite strongly object to having to omit them. The only thing any publisher ever did for me was to register my work with PRS and MCPS then sit back and take 50% of my earnings. I have never had a publisher promote a single song of mine, I have never had a publisher make any contribution to my songwriting or performing, or even use the profit they made from me to help promote someone else's work. So far as I can see, their only interest is in raking off money and to hear them use the argument that people putting lyrics on websites are ripping off songwriters is utterly nausea-inducing. But such is life in a world where nothing has worth other than as property and a means of extracting profit.

Therefore most of the songs are either my versions of traditional songs or my own compositions. The songtexts which are the copyright property of others are quoted exclusively for information purposes and I have permission to reprint them. If I have inadvertantly included something which the copyright owner objects to being included, please let me know and I will remove it immediately.

I encourage readers of these pages to purchase the recordings and songbooks of other composers quoted here.

Use freely for your own personal research or private non-commercial purposes my own material shared here, but please credit the source. The use of any of it for any commercial or profitmaking purpose is absolutely, totally prohibited, without any exceptions. Such use is a breach of UK and International copyright law as well as morally indefensible. You're getting it free - if you want to pass it on, pass it on free.

You may sing these songs and quote the informative notes, you may print out the songs in order to learn them, but please, do not reproduce any of this material in written or printed form, online or offline, for any other reason than your own personal use without asking my permission first or the permission of the copyright owner if it is someone else's song.

This is a gesture of trust. Please respect it.

 

The following links are to other websites and I am not responsible for what you might find there. Sites do change without warning and it is impossible for me to keep checking that links go where they should.