Since this blog is about "making things" and then selling them (which has to do with one's creativity) and with songwriting and artwork being "intellectual property" requiring skill and talent, I wanted to address "contests" in this article. I won't go into as much detail here, but I invite you to read more at my other blog: http://terryscottsings.blogspot.com . With songwriting as with any other creative product, my feeling is that one must not "give it away" free (unless one volunteers to do so, on their own, for personal and well thought out reasons). When one gives away their talents like this, they continue the cycle of the "poor artist" syndrome for everyone. When people do not pay for something, it then has little or no value. For hundreds (maybe thousands) of years, artists, songwriters, crafters of any form, have been taken advantage of in the way of "contests" and similar things. Imagine a group of p...