May I borrow your copywriting acumen?

I don't work for an agency, so I can't speak to that part. I work as a copywriter for a company whose target market is heavily female -- not only is our entire workforce easily 70% female, but it would just be dumb to be sexist toward a copywriter who's also the target market, ya know?

Personally, I wouldn't be afraid of it. Don't work with people who disrespect you. I realize you may not be in a position to make demands - I certainly wasn't when I first started. But if you keep that goal in mind, that you are NOT going to work for a sexist or disrespectful company, you'll eventually get there.

And salary runs the gamut. Your best bet is to do some Salary.com and Glassdoor.com research, in addition to contacting copywriters local to your area. I'm sure SF and Chicago salaries probably have some variations.

It's hard to find a job anywhere right now. It just so happened I had friends in the bay area when I noticed an uptick in the available jobs. Before that I'd been freelancing whatever copywriting projects I could find. Do research but don't let it paralyze you - get out there and do it and learn. I wish I could go back and tell myself that years ago, would have saved me so much time.

If you want it, do everything in your power to get it, and don't let a crappy job market stop you. Apply for every copywriting job, volunteer to do brochures and newsletters for charities you like (I still volunteer to handle a charity newsletter for a niche cause I adore), contact every marketing manager in your area for freelance projects. Don't limit yourself by focusing on how hard it may or may not be - nothing worth having is easy to attain.

I work part-time at an agency and freelance on the side.

It really depends. Sometimes the client wants a certain song to be used, sometimes another employee at the agency gets to decide (one of the designers or whoever specializes in video), maybe they have someone specifically dedicated to audio... often people wear a lot of different hats, so the copywriter might have a say/opinion in what song should be used as part of the creative team as a whole (i.e. collaboration).

Ha! Ask legal, we always pass it off to the account managers to deal with such technicalities. I'm pretty sure you need to contact the publisher and record label to get permission, and in some cases the artist.

Not necessarily, though it makes the process much easier. I interned at my agency before I got hired, so my team was familiar with me beforehand. I actually quit college before getting my degree because I wanted to get into the "real world" sooner. Let's just say I was never big on formal schooling. Worked out well enough!

Varies massively. Agency copywriters will generally get paid less than a good freelancer. A smart and fairly talented freelancer will be around the 100k mark. Agency it depends on size and how much they value you.

There can be sexual bias in any business and advertising is no exception. If you're imagining a Mad Men scenario where I have to sell myself to get a creative say, no, it's nothing like that. I've yet to encounter any gender based hate... or hate in general!