People taking songwriting credits for songs they didn't actually write and compose

[TerryFinch1964]

I've seen this alot in music where sometimes the producer of a song will give him/herself a songwriting credit on a song that he/she had nothing to do with. The reason why they do this is because a songwriting credit means more royalities and so they'll get more money that way. Same thing can happen with the artist as well when an outside songwriter will come in and write a song for them and then the artist will give themselves a co-writing credit to get more royalties for themselves.

What's everyone's thought about this? Taking credit for somebody else's work is something i really don't like. How would you feel if you put alot of work into something and then someone comes along and gives themselves a co-credit without contributing anything?

I am a professional musician and have in the last decade started writing and recording my own music, I am a completely unknown artist, but it hasn't stopped people from trying to muscle in on my song writing credits, I have had a couple of vocalists, a producer and recently a bass player after one listen all telling me they can "improve" my work, I gave a few of them the benefit of the doubt and the result was that they ruined the songs, the producer used an age old tactic by telling me that my music is so terrible it's not worth bothering with, he was motivated enough to bother with it by suggesting he could improve it though, he must have thought I was born yesterday. I have seen other plagiarism on the work of well know artists, where someone literally changes a single note in a piece of music and then claims full writing credits, just to claim a paltry couple of quid from the PRS, as Hunter S Thompson said, "the music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where pimps and thieves run free and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side".