Songwriter Demos- How much production?

Honestly, at this point, I think a loop and clean vocal acoustics are fine. I do full demos most of the time, but sometimes I think I should dumb it down.

Thanks John. With so many production tools, it's hard not resisting doing a full production, but I think there's a point of diminishing returns. It's easy to get lost in technology and forget about originality/emotion/freshness etc. Have to wear the engineer/producer/A&R mind reading hats, while wearing the songwriter, musician, lyricist hats.

It also depends on who you are making demos for? Most record companies dictate now who their artists can accept demos from or work with on writing sessions. So unless you have the hook up within the industry its a long shot that anything will ever happen with your demos. I know guys who are in famous bands and they can't even get their demos heard by record companies for an artist they like. And there is an army of these "Producer/Songwriters that all the record companies seem to cycle through. Some are on their own and a lot of them sign with these new style publishing groups that help pay their rent in New York or LA and then take a huge cut of anything they write that gets picked up.

What sucks is that this sort of system makes you feel like everyone is hustling you. I know guys who are always trying to engender themselves with a buddy just to get a chance to meet another buddy who might get them a "writing day". It starts to feel desperate out there. Things have gotten worse. More mercenary, and everyone from Keith Urban to Gavin DeGraw is willing to "go pop" and sing to a silly drum machine and a wanna be Max Martin track.

I think in today's market unless you are tied in with one of these "publishing mills" www.greenandbloom.net , which by the way will gladly have you sign some paperwork if you have songs they think they can sell, then you are best off putting some finished and polished work out there in the marketplace and hope that you can find a placement or an up and coming artist who wants a song you wrote.

So I don't think a  medley is going to do anything for you unless you are collaborating with another writer(s) who wants to hear some ideas out of your woodshed.

And it's different for the different markets, country versus pop etc., although the paradigm is becoming very similar.

There are some ridiculously talented people out there going nowhere and making no money, but that doesn't mean it can't hit for anyone but you need to be grinding it with a well informed plan of attack.