Don Tomlinson wrote or co-wrote every song on this website totally without generative AI assistance in the creation of lyrics and melodies. Generative AI could relegate songwriting to creation largely through database mining. Many of these songs have been streamed on Amazon, Apple, YouTube, Google Play, Deezer, iHeart, Spotify, Tidal, etc., more than 2,000,000 times. Latest sync-license: “Way Out In The Country” to MTV.

Okay, so for any of you songwriters out there who might be visiting this page, in addition to being a songwriter, I’ve been an entertainment lawyer and entertainment law professor for many years. I’ve been performing and writing music for a long time as a “second” career, but I have made my principal living as a lawyer (I have represented innumerable clients in the entertainment law world over the years) and as a law professor (e.g., I taught Entertainment Law at the University of Houston Law Center for more than ten years). I have an LL.M. (graduate law degree) in Intellectual Property Law (copyright emphasis) from UHLC. While a law professor, I wrote two law review articles of interest to songwriters and others in the “biz.” Neither of them are “current” since they were published in 1995 and 2002, respectively, but the principles espoused in them are relevant today (though it would be good to write such an article concerning today’s songwriter/music user issues; maybe I’ll get to that one of these days). At any rate, here is a link to each article.  “Everything That Glitters Is Not Gold: Songwriter-Music Publisher Agreements and Disagreements,” 18 Hastings Communication and Entertainment Law Journal 85 (1995) and “Federal Versus State Jurisdiction and Limitations Versus Laches in Songwriter Disputes: The Split Among the Federal Circuits in Let The Good Times Roll, Why Do Fools Fall In Love? and Joy To The World,”  23 Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Review 55 (2002).