Peggy,
A lot of people think this looks easy. They come to town, set up shop and just think because they are now "PUBLISHERS" they are going to get thousands of songs (and they will) and they will find those nuggets among the rabble.(they won't)
When you go through a LOT of songs, you start to see them from a very different perspectives. Songs are "writer's children" and we all think they are each unique and special.
But when you start seeing hundreds and hundreds and then thousands and thousands, you start to see how very few of them stand out at all. In Nashville we see this pretty clearly because we are emmersed in songs all the time. When you hear the same subject matter, same rhymes, same uninteresting melody or structures over and over, or mostly SOUNDING JUST LIKE THERE ARE ALREADY TOO MANY OF ON THE RADIO, you tend to tune them out very quickly. When you couple that with the fact that ARTISTS ARE WRITERS TOO, as well as their producers, publishers, and the people who sign their checks, you know THEY have a connection to their songs as well. Do you think anyone else is going to be able to summarize Taylor Swift's emotions and experiences better than Taylor Swift? Not likely.
But new people have never been around long enough to see those nuances. They are just....new. They hear things on the radio and think "I can beat that." Or they may have worked with another publisher, never felt they got their due and decide to strike out on their own. If this person is on the Row, I would bet they are probably someone who has been involved somewhere before. Or a housewife wanting to "play publisher."
They come in on almost a daily basis. And a lot of them are like the "Internet Millionaires' that were supposed to be developed during the dotcom bubble. When the Internet got started, EVERYBODY was supposed to be able to make millions off the Internet. Everyone had companies, ideas, inventions, they thought were going to be so HUGE once they got on the net. They didn't count on EVERYONE getting on the Internet with the same ideas, and that when yuo put something on the Net, nine times out of ten, it is going to be USED for free, for the most part.
I believe there are a lot of publishers and writers that are like that. They are expecting big bucks when they get something ready to go on the Net. Then they put it up there, it is downloaded all over the place, even some of them become viral sensations (making everyone else think they can too) and the cycle repeats itself.
SOUTH PARK had a great spoof on this once, with all these Viral stars, in a room, talking about all the "hits" they had gotten. But none of it translated into actual money.
Sounds like you have found one of those. If they can't answer some simple questions, I'd say, they don't have good answers for it. But even the people in the scams, can do quite well because they prey on people's dreams. If they reach out to 5000-10,000 people and get ten to twenty percent of those spending money with them, they can do well.
I don't think ANYONE starts out evil or as rip offs. But I think they get into reality and find ways to make money in a market that for so many has gone belly up.
Just depends on how low you want to stoop.
MAB