In my last blog I suggested that this start of a new year is an excellent time for refocusing. You can stop, take a breath, get some perspective on what you are doing and where you are going, and decide where you need to put your best effort right now. To complement that idea I am going to suggest that you learn to narrow your focus. You need to pick one, manageable thing. Success in music is not a focus. Improving your skills at getting bookings, learning to play Thelonius Monk, or finding a way of marketing your songs, are all things that can be focused on. And yes, these can, and probably should be, broken down into even more manageable chunks.

The Multitasking Trap

The fastest path to frustration is to try doing everything at once. One of the shocking truths (for some) is that multitasking does not generally produce very good results. It might produce a lot of results, but little of it is worth much. There is no focus, little ability to follow through, and you come across as distracted—not a good image in business, playing on the bandstand, or listening to a loved one. Success and focus go together. The best negotiators are patient people; some of the best players know when to lay back.

Being focused isn’t easy in a world full of distractions, but I frequently see people fall by the wayside because they don’t understand the need. Here is a case in point. A talented singer I know moved to a town and starting putting a band together, jamming with everyone who would let her join in, and booking gigs, all at once. Because she had a compelling personality and a fine voice, she got several gigs. Unfortunately, her talents did not extend to band management and, as the gigs approached, she was unable to keep her band together. Although they rehearsed a fair amount, progress was slower than she wanted, and tempers flared. The band was fired or quit, depending on the person telling the story, and the gigs were ultimately either cancelled (bad for your reputation) or played with a pickup band, which couldn’t provide the showcase she really wanted. Her intentions were fine—she wanted to take the local musical scene by storm, but she didn’t determine what needed to be done, prioritize, and then focus. Impatience shot down an energized effort.

Although it can seem intolerable to put things we want on hold, it is only sensible to present new material or a performance when it is ready, and not a moment before. The big acts rehearse for a long time, and often use coaches to get the performance to the desired level. Even Michael Jackson worked with dance professionals to hone his skills, back at his peak.
If success is your goal, then hard work should be your mantra. And the focus should be on the thing that is most important to do next. It might be something to do with business, it might be art, it might be personal.

Know What Needs To Be Done

A very good course I took years ago suggested that we should all have a short “to do” list. This list should be of only the things that qualify for the heading “If this was the only thing I got done today, I would have accomplished something important.” You put the most important at the top and do it. You don’t think about #2 until #1 is done, or you find that for some external reason it can’t be done today.

That is one way to learn focus. It is how I got this blog done today, rather than at some future time. It is the way I will finally learn to play Thelonius Monk tunes (or anything else).

So you focus, narrowly, on something to be accomplished, then give it your best shot. Then you move on. You can’t make a mistake by focusing and giving it your best effort. It’s only when your thoughts on unfocused (as in multitasking) that you give less than your best.

Now it is time to find your focus, and go for it. It promise that it will make 2010 the best possible year it can be for you. And who deserves that success more?

Many people view the end of one year and the beginning of another as a time to reflect. As an advocate of the here and now, I suggest that a better idea is to take this opportunity to refocus—your attention, your effort and your intention. I’m not talking New Year’s resolutions or anything so trendy. No, it is time to drag out the thoughts you’ve had on your marketing plan and public relations plan, take a hard look at the current realities of the world of music, and get everything up to date.

Why now?

There is a sense of a fresh start that comes with a new year. That means you could have a little extra energy and enthusiasm to put into it. It also means it can be easier to let go of past mistakes and old habits. Habits might die hard, but it was reputedly Einstein who said: “Repeating an action and expecting a different result is one form of insanity.” If he didn’t say it, he should have. And there was never a better time to change your actions.

Remember that figuring out what doesn’t work is a sign of progress. That is the process of discovery that is essential to scientific discovery. You make some assumptions based on the best information available to you, and try something. If it doesn’t work, the appropriate questions are: “Is my vision inaccurate?” and “Do I understand why it didn’t work?” Looking for blame, or worrying about how that effort looks to other people is wasted effort, and adds stress to your life that is counterproductive (not all stress is bad, but self imposed stress that is strictly negative, is.)

My marketing plan thought for the year

Here is a new thought for a new year. It is reasonable to have a marketing plan that involves not trying to market anything. If that sounds foolish, let me explain. Sometimes the reason marketing efforts don’t work is because the product isn’t ready to market. You might need a fallow period, a time when you develop new skills, learn something, gain some insight, or connect with people who complement your efforts. Any of these, or a combination, might be what it takes to create music that gets noticed.

And it might not just be a creative learning. You might, by biding your time and paying attention, find a new way to package your music or performance. In the heat of battle, when you are performing actively and busting your butt to get noticed, it can be hard to see what others are doing. Taking a breather can let you profit from their brilliance and their mistakes, equally. For instance, if you’ve done all the guerilla marketing stuff (which really is not new, or underground, it is just marketing that was repackaged for a wider audience), and things seem to have peaked, getting out and seeing how things work for other artists might open your eyes to new ideas, or you might figure out why things are going wrong.

Time out to learn

For example, I’ve read that you need to “ask for the sale” at gigs. Common wisdom in certain circles advocates having someone hawking your merchandise. Superficially it makes sense. But if I go to a gig and the emphasis is on the merchandise, if the music isn’t exceptional, I won’t hang around. High pressure sales make a free concert too damn expensive for my tastes. I like the CDs and so on to be available, and often buy one or more at a concert, but I don’t want to feel like I went to the mall (I don’t go to malls willingly). A low pressure approach suits me, and seems to suit the audiences I play for. But for a long time, I had the feeling I was doing something wrong, missing out on something. Taking a break from the hustle and gaining some objectivity, I think I was on the right path. Yes, a hustle might have sold a few more CDs, but simply selling a few more CDs was less important than building a loyal following.

As I took a break, I found many areas in my performance that could be significantly improved. All it took was a clear view of what I wanted to accomplish.

Marketing for the laid back musician

For me, marketing is an interesting and often difficult challenge. I am not a pushy person, in general. Aggressive, but I don’t like to go where I am not welcome. So much of my marketing is trying to find ways to be welcomed to new audiences. Getting gigs in bars and clubs requires a pushy person, which is why everyone wants a booking agent or manager—to do it for them.  In my case, I shifted my focus from bars to festivals for a time. I enjoyed playing blues and folk festivals. Good pay, people sell your CDs for you, you play one set, and the evening is free. Not a bad deal. But they are infrequent, making it hard to make a living that way. But it made me happier, and gave me time to create music for music libraries and improve my music skills and understanding, while still gigging.

I don’t want to suggest with this that all of you should take some time out. I just want you to keep it in mind as a possibility. If you can focus your marketing and pr plans toward a clear vision of a successful 2010, and do it with enthusiasm, then you are on a roll. Jumping off now makes no sense. No, this is the fallback plan for those who feel lost in the woods. And, if you need a break, it doesn’t have to be a long one. You just need the time to sort out your thoughts and vision.

Meantime, if you have some insights into things that the rest of us should be factoring into our marketing for the New Year, whether it is a way to deal with music for phone aps or getting tight fisted drunks to buy CDs or download cards, we’d love to hear it and discuss it.

Most of my articles have addressed songwriting from the business to business perspective—you are creating songs or instrumentals that you want to place in film or television, or get some artist with a track record to release. For those of you who also make CDs, or at least recordings, there is also the issue of promoting your music, and yourself as an artist.

Music marketing is big time, especially online marketing, and it’s almost easier to talk about what you can’t do (for the moment) than what you can.  But we will give it a shot.

Social networking is a big step forward, as is selling (or giving away) downloads, and putting together electronic press kits to help the world know about your music. There are even online public relations services to get the word out.

If you are looking for airplay for your music, sites like www.AirPlayDirect.com are there to provide that connection.

Sometimes it is all far too much.

So let us divide these up a bit and see if any hold promise. In this article, I want to look at social networking and electronic press kits. Next time we will focus on online PR (how it works and how to use it).

SOCIAL NETWORKING

As Kavit point out in a recent article, there are some good strategies for using the various social networks to get attention. Better yet, many of them are interconnected. I put songs up on reverbnation. Whenever I post a new one, there is an announcement on my status update on twitter, myspace, facebook and, of course, reverbnation. In fact, any status update I make at revernation goes to all those places. This probably produces a certain amount of yawn inducing overlap, but it is efficient. A variation is that myspace and twitter are also now linked. All of this incestuous sounding linking is free, and fairly easy and quick to do on days when the wind is from the West and the Powers That Be are smiling. As a result, this falls into the “why not?” category of promotional activity.

Similarly, Fanbridge helps you collects fans from several social sites and provides a way to send out blanket emails to them, announcing gigs, your upcoming CD, or news from the band. (Does anyone e-mail anymore?) If your fans read emails, this is another brainless way to stay in touch. Actually the content should NOT be brainless–just the distribution method. Send out things the fans will find interesting or save the electrons. We don’t need more garbage out there. Your fans (and I) will appreciate you all the more. But inside information, or thought provoking ideas could score some points.

I should point out that Reverbnation also provides widgets you can use to collect fans, and others to  put your songs on Facebook and so on. It’s all very powerful in terms of efficient promotion.

ELECTRONIC PRESS KITS (EPK)

These started with a bang. Who could resist sending stuff out electronically? Everything you needed to know about a band, including songs and videos. But SPAM filters and the vast amount of stuff cluttering in boxes put paid to the idea.  It is just as effective to send links to songs on broadjam.com or Reverbnation. They let you send links to specific songs you have posted. It is a bit classier than sending an mp3 and doesn’t foul up the inbox.

But an EPK is an online presence, and lets you provide an information rich link in your signature line. And so, such an account, say with www.sonicbids.com or Airplay Direct, can do you some good.

All of these are useful, but not enough in and of themselves. Also, there are about a bazillion of these now; and don’t take my naming these as a recommendation as to what will work for you.

Ultimately If you want to be noticed, your music heard, you will need the market muscle of public relations. Public relations can be proactive, where these sites are reactive, and it can be targeted to a niche, genre, or just a good story.

One of the difficulties of working in any artistic discipline is finding a balance between the art and business portions of your efforts. It isn’t so much the right brain versus left brain problem that we read so much about—both art and business efforts should combine both of these. After all, you want logic in your art and some creativity in your business to get the most out of ALL of your talents.

Typically, when making art, you want your creative side to have uncensored rein over your efforts and then be able to apply some intelligent editing and formatting to give it polish and coherency. In business, although it can be a step by step process, you want to be able to unleash your considerable creative talents to finding new approaches to business problems or obstacles. That is where your strength lies. You should be using all your resources for any problem you encounter in life.

The Balancing Act

The balancing act I am referring now to is much more basic. Simply put: both art and music require a great deal of energy and time. The balance is how and where you spend it.

Consider the simple idea of dealing with your marketing plan. We’ve done a couple of blogs to get you started with that effort. I suggested marketing strategies for songwriters and Kavit wrote an excellent piece on business plans .
Done correctly, these don’t take an enormous amount of time. But they do take some thoughtful effort and should be reviewed regularly (daily review of your goals helps you stay on track), and don’t replace your record keeping and bookkeeping. These aren’t the same, by the way. Record keeping involves maintaining a current list of your songs, contracts with music libraries and publishers, submissions wherever, registrations with your PRO, following up on cue sheet submissions, and anything else relevant. Bookkeeping is the accounting—where your money goes and comes from. Without maintaining your accounts you will dislike tax time even more than if you keep them.

On the other side, if you aren’t spending an enormous amount of time working on new music, studying your craft, and trying new things, how can you hope to do anything worth marketing?

Divide and Conquer?

One approach I’ve heard from successful folks is that they divide their time (however much it is) into studio (aka art) time and office time. They never mix the two. They mentally put on a suit and go to the office, and shut off the phone and all outside communication when they go in the studio.

That doesn’t work for me. I find myself working on a tune, and an opportunity pops up and I stop what I’m doing to evaluate it. My natural way of working is to be what computer folks call, interrupt driven. To that end, I have a music computer and music computer in the same workspace—both on. I often listen to tracks I am working on while doing the record keeping, or work on the bridge for a tune while waiting for a response to come back from an email to a music super or library.

Part of this approach has been a reaction to the way my life has developed. But I am used to it. My way might drive you nuts. The point is finding a strategy that works for you.

Einstein said that one definition of insanity was repeating your actions and expecting a different outcome. In short, the sane thing is to try different approaches and see what works. If something doesn’t work the first time, evaluate what you did to see if you gave it a fair shake. Remember that some parts of this songwriting business are not fun, but need doing.

Like writing music, experimentation should be the heart of your approach to this crazy career. Be flexible.

Prioritize Your Efforts

One technique that is taught in many business courses on efficient time management says that you should:

1. Make a list of all the things that need doing (not what you want to do, although some of the things better be things you want to do, or you are in the wrong business). These should be tasks, not goals—things that you need to do in the short term.
2. Prioritize your list. Not all of it, but go through it and pick the three most important.
3. Do the first one. The idea is that because the top job is the most important one, if you spend all day on it, that’s okay, because it is important. If you do nothing else, you have still done the most important thing (to you).
4. Do the next one.

Based on the results of your daily effort, you should make a new list every day. Ideally, do it at the end of your day so that the list waits for you the next morning.

I’ve used this approach and have been amazed at how much I can get done, and how it minimizes the time I waste. Let me know how you handle your balancing act.

If you had to pick two important qualities for songwriters who want to succeed in the contemporary music industry, what two would you pick? Many people would focus on things like originality in their approach to music, or the ability to anticipate new trends. But let’s take a look at those.

While originality can be a great thing, it isn’t really essential. Okay, I hear those cries of anguish. But if you listen carefully to the music that is finding its way into television and movies, you’ll probably agree that most of it is not highly original. And the commercial opportunities to place your music that you’ll see do not typically ask for something original. More often that not, what music supervisors wanted is something exactly like, but not a copy of, something already popular or that was popular at some specific time in the past. Sort of a known unknown. Sounds contradictory, but true. A movie looking for a Sinatra style song, was in one recent tip sheet. Another asks for traditional Middle Eastern music. Another wants “southern rock like Lynyrd Skynyrd and dance club music like Black Eyed Peas. And yet, another, well you should get the point here. If you want more examples, get the free Taxi listings or go to the public listings at New On The Charts .

Being able to work accurately within existing styles is going to go a long way toward getting placements—much further than originality, which can actually be a hard sell. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be innovative, just that you can’t expect to sell your work simply because it is different and original. Good is more important than original.

As a side issue here, you need to be sure you understand what music supervisors mean when they say “like.” If the call ifs for a replacement for Satisfaction, by the Rolling Stones, don’t send a Reggae styled version of that song or something you think the Stones will want to record if they ever hear it. What is wanted is a very similar song. The vibe you hear, the tempo, the feel of it, is what is wanted. Of course your riff is better than Keith Richards’ (you’ve been able to learn from him after all), but what you are being told is that they want Satisfaction but can’t afford it. Don’t send in curry chicken when they send out for Chinese. You won’t satisfy anyone.

Okay, back to our main theme.

Anticipating trends can be important when you are pitching songs to artists. But you better be right. You cannot expect to set the trends—see the discussion of originality above. If, like me, you scratch you head at the latest and greatest, you won’t be successful in trying to outguess the market. If you are part of the movement, however, go for it. But again, don’t expect a big career in movie and television placements.

So what qualities would I pick?

1. Patience, and

2. Be Among The Willing

Patience is important because, typically, everything in this business takes a long time. (Until someone needs something yesterday, of course. But we are talking about breaking in, here.) It takes people a long time to make up there mind—and they might not tell you their decision at all if you are not the chosen one. It takes time for cue sheets to be filed. It takes a long time for royalties to come in. It takes a long time for CDs with your songs on them to be released. If you are not patience you will go nuts. Cultivate patience, and like a good fisherman you will eventually manage to be in the right time and place to make a great catch.

About all you can do to keep your sanity is submit things and forget about them. If you hear back, great. If not, you should be busy with the next project.

Being among the willing is based on the idea that successful people get that way by choosing to work with the willing. So you put yourself in that path. This is a bit of a variation on “the customer is always right,” in that it includes they idea that you are going to do whatever you can to help them get what they want. Even if it means referring them to someone else. Don’t promise what you can’t deliver, and always deliver what you promise. That is what the willing do.

Of course, that isn’t the end all of the music business, but it will help a great deal. And it might keep you on an even keel while you work at it. Those of us who are ex sailors like to be on an even keel, because the alternative is not fun.

So keep doing what you are doing, but all the while being patient and placing yourself squarely among the willing—the helpful.

Another way to look at this came from Dale Carnegie, I believe it was, who said: “Be nice to people on the way up, because you meet the same people on the way down.”

If you are trying to break into the world of writing for film and television, one important marketing resource is music libraries. In general, these are nothing more or less than clearing houses for music.

A film or television music supervisor finds that one or several particular libraries have (or can find) music that is right for their projects. Clearly, at the high end (those high budget films or major television shows) this can involve significant connections—quality industry networking. A music supervisor for a high budget production tends to turn to known quantities—libraries that have provided good material previously—or people that they have worked with before. For the same reason you see the same people scoring movie after movie—they have shown they can do the job.

But in this online age a library can mean anything from an exclusive contact down to a server that warehouses music for music supervisors to wade through using a search engine that sorts based on the information you enter about your music. This is a mass market approach that relies on making music available to anyone who will look through the catalog, or at least the playlists (a collection of music of a certain type, like country, for instance) rather than asking the library to recommend three or four tunes that meet certain requirements.

Now don’t get the idea that the high end libraries are all good and the rest are bad. It depends on what you need, what rights they take, the kind of work you produce, and ultimately, what works for you. Some mass market libraries provide an important entre into the world of writing for video. After all, low budget production, web shows or small video productions need music too. And they provide credits. Many composers have proven their mettle (and learned a great deal) working for little or no money. Although you will hear cries of pain from some folks that you are devaluing the music by providing it cheaply, the reality is that you need a way to show your stuff and most of these markets will never be able to pay what the music is “worth” no matter what moral ground you wish to stand on. That doesn’t mean you work for free forever, it just means that the entry level markets server a valuable service.

If you produce a constant stream of work in the vein of existing groups, you will find lots of opportunities. Most opportunities, especially the last minute requirements, are for replacement songs. If you can produce similar tunes (feel, tempo, instrumentation, lyrics) to well known groups, you will undoubtedly find open arms at most libraries.

However, this work requires a special kind of objectivity. It isn’t something I can do well, if at all. I confuse my own musical values with those of a band I try to copy. Well, I probably let my values run roughshod over bands I am trying to copy. Ultimately, I find it better to do my own music and avoid comparisons. Still, you need to determine where your music fits in the constellation of music. Is it contemporary or retro? Is it period music—there is a market for old styles of music in period movies, but you have to be good at it.

So where to go with your music? A little bit of searching online will quickly produce a huge number of music libraries to choose from. Some want exclusives, some are nonexclusive, some let you choose. Almost all have their submission requirements somewhere on their website. Every one is a potential place to start.

Now before you shoot off your entire catalog to every library on the web, a word of caution. From day one strive to be professional. That means clean submissions that follow the guidelines carefully (their guidelines, not yours or those of the first library you run into). Don’t send instrumentals if they only take songs. Don’t send mp3s if they ask for CDs. Be sure to put your contact information everywhere on your materials. Bear in mind that successful people like to work with the willing. Your job is to appear to be willing to work with them. And then follow through. Be one of the willing.

When I first read Kavit’s blog on writing a business plan I felt that he had touched on a vitally important issue. Most people in the music business don’t spend the time working out a business plan, especially individual artists. His ideas were sound, but for me it had two flaws: the audience and the fact that it is called a plan.

My concern was that he realistically addressed only one group within the music community—artists who are selling recordings to the public. I call this consumer business, because they sell direct to the consumers. Songwriters, especially nonperforming songwriters, I felt, couldn’t take advantage of a business strategy that concentrated on building a fan base and promoting concerts.

My second issue was that is a plan. I prefer strategies. An old Hebrew adage says: “Man plans, God laughs.” I don’t like to be laughed at, so I develop strategies.

Kavit’s response was to suggest that I write a marketing strategy for songwriters. So I am going to look at the four elements that he addressed in his original piece, convert them into a songwriter business strategy, and provide ideas suited to business to business marketing, where a songwriter licenses material to people in the business who package it with videos, or games, or on an artist’s CD or downloads.

To make this strategy effective, write things down as you go. Paper and pencil make it all more tangible. For each section you will need to make a list. Then your strategy will evolve directly from a very simple set of principles.
1) Identify the things on the list that are working
2) Identify the things on the list that are not working
3) Do more of #1
4) Do less of #2

Here we go.

OPERATIONS—your activities

Your operations are all the things you do in your music business. Typically they are divided into two flavors: activities that make money and those that don’t make money directly or immediately. What work related activities does your typical day include? Make a list and see if you can sort them into the two categories.

Activities that are necessary, but that do not produce a profit are pretty clear. Accounting comes to mind. Tracking your songs is another. But what about songwriting? There is no immediate profit. Arranging? Same thing? Talking to a producer? That is networking, unless you are discussing an actual deal.

In general, which activities are moneymakers is less clear for a songwriter. Certainly if you are asked to write for an artist, or are commissioned to score a movie, those would be good examples of work that contributes directly to the bottom line. But other things are murkier. For instance, putting songs in a library is done in the hope they will produce income, but it won’t be immediate, and it isn’t certain.

Nonetheless, the list will help you take stock of how you spending your time. Obviously putting finished songs into a library is closer to the goal of dollars in hand than practicing your instrument or registering songs with your PRO.

If you are new to the game, there might be nothing in the money earning category right now. That’s okay. If you have had some success with getting certain kinds of music into libraries, then list that for the time being. You will have to determine how to evaluate whether you are spending your time in a businesslike manner, or shuffling papers.
Business to business work is often one slippery step removed from the cash register.

MARKETING—how you reach customers

Before you can attack this item you need to define who and what you are. Are you hoping to score movies, write songs for artists, place songs in movies, write instrumentals for background…? Maybe you aspire to all of these.

So let’s break this into two large chunks: writing for artists and writing for film/tv placement because the positioning defines what group of customers you are going to chase.

To get to artists, your customers are really producers, managers, and record labels (A&R people). For film/tv, they are music supervisors, music libraries and filmmakers.

If you are after artists, you will need to pick a genre, and learn everything there is to know about it. For film/tv, you need to learn what works for video, and how to make the job of music supervisor easier. You’ll need to learn to create cues and various mixes of your music.

So make your list of things you are doing to market your music, and evaluate each item in terms of whether it makes sense in helping reaching your customer base. Having songs on iTunes, or spending lots of time on a web site, for example, does little in terms of your business objectives as a songwriter. Your audience is not typically looking for a strong web presence. They require commercial songs and instrumentals—good demos and master recordings. Contacts with libraries (who often feed leads to their composers) can provide a direct channel to your customers. A working relationship with a producer can lead to work for artists.

When making your evaluations, be tough on yourself. If you aren’t, the industry will be.

FINANCIALS—how you spend and make money

It is difficult to estimate income from songwriting unless you have a large catalog of songs that are generating income. Initially, every dime you make is windfall profit. The only effective financial strategy is to look at the various sources of income as they develop and, to repeat our fundamental strategy, do more of what works. If a library places one of your dance tunes, write more for them.

Your outgo you can control. And you have to. The biggest problem you face is the endless variety of services (see my blog on that subject) that tap into you for $5 for a submission here, and $10 there. You can spend thousands of dollars very rapidly on submissions. And there are often annual charges as well. My advice, try one or two services, tip sheets or whatever that seem to fit your marketing strategy. Get samples of their leads and make sure that they are mostly the kind of customer you are looking for. If one doesn’t produce, move to another. When one doesn’t work, try to learn why. When possible, listen to the music that beat yours out.

Most libraries don’t charge you to submit. Listen to the music that most of them have on their sites, and look at the placements they have made and see if you fit in. This should be an instinctive part of your ongoing positioning.

In short, control the money you spend. You might find it more profitable to save your marketing dollars for studio demos or musicians to help you prepare your product. Look at the list of places you spend money, and (again) flag the things that have worked and those that haven’t.

ACTION ITEMS

Now it’s time to reduce all these lists to a single strategy. Take them an create one master list of things you will do and not do..

Bear in mind that songwriter is a numbers game. If you are extremely lucky, writing one or two songs might make you rich, but successful songwriters typically write hundreds of songs and keep writing hundreds to stay successful. If you write for libraries, then volume is especially important. You need inventory, and you need the education that comes from writing and producing and placing music.

In the beginning, you might have a goal of writing songs that get better critiques or get accepted by fussy libraries (not all are). You might try a new genre or a new technique. But ultimately, an important action item is to get more songs to more customers. Improve your odds.

Your list should consist of active sentences, such as: “In three months I will have produced three new original tunes, created 30 sec, 45 sec cues from them and placed them in libraries.” Or “In six months I will have pitched my country songs to at least 10 artists.” Make sure that the actions are things you can control. It is useless to write: “I will place 14 songs in movies.” There might not be 14 appropriate opportunities that come your way. But you can write fourteen songs that would be great movie party songs, or club tunes. Remember that this is your strategy, and that means it is about what you can and should accomplish to reach your goals. Beyond these you have to have a little trust in the universe.

Be sure to include the lists from the other sections. “I will spend less time doing x and more on y” for each section are clear action items.

IMPORTANT CAVEAT
Once you’ve gone through this process, you can heave a sigh of relief and get started implementing it, but keep your lists and comments. Put your master list where you can see it every day. Remind yourself that these are goals you have set for yourself, to achieve your own goals. How strict you are with yourself depends on how important those goals truly are

In a year, make new lists, and THEN drag out these lists and see how you have faired. Did you accomplish your action items? Did you cut back on the wasteful tasks and do more of the ones that generate income? And evaluate the results. Perhaps you judged things wrong. Things that seemed like solid, constructive approaches can fizzle out.

Bear in mind that this is a template for a specific (defined by you) kind of success. If you don’t meet all the goals, don’t carry out all the actions, then you haven’t succeeded in following your strategy. And that isn’t the same as failing.

This is my approach, and I will be going into more detail on most of these topics in the future. In the meantime, let me hear you thoughts. Have I left anything out that you are dealing with, either well or poorly?

As a clever songwriter, you probably work hard to get the right title for your song. If you are pitching it to an A&R person or someone else connected with an artist, this is very important. The title is often the first impression anyone has of your song. But, if you work with music libraries, you might find there is a factor at work that can throw all that creative effort out the window.

Let’s go back in time. Suppose you are young songwriter of some success named Henry Mancini and you just finished writing a song with Johnny Mercer that is called “Moon River.” In that era, a filmmaker might hear it on the radio and decide it was the perfect song for his movie. So he picks up the phone (no email yet) and contacts your publisher and the record company to secure the rights to use the song and the master recording. In filling out the cue sheet for the performance rights organization (PRO), the music supervisor would nicely put in the title “Moon River,” and everyone is more or less happy.

Now jump ahead. You are Hank Mancini, grandson of the writer of “Moon River.” Of course you call yourself “HMan,” and you have just written a soon to be urban classic, called “Blood Streets.” You’d like to get it in a movie. But these are different times. No music supervisor or filmmaker has ever heard of you. Naturally that just shows their ignorance, but it also represents the difficulty of trying to get noticed when everyone else is trying to get noticed too.

So you turn to music libraries to help you make the necessary connections. Now, since you don’t really trust one library to work its butt off trying to place your song, you’d like to put it in several libraries. That means you want nonexclusive contracts. No problem. Nonexclusive deals are almost as common as songwriters (“common” in the sense of everywhere, not in the sense of, well, “common.”).

But this is where the trick comes in. Suppose you have deals with Library A and B. Library A, being hardworking, better connected and hungrier, gets your song used in a low budget horror flick (congratulations!). They represent negotiate the rights to your version of the song, and the song itself and all is well. Except…

The problem is that when the song is listed with the PRO, the library usually will have dealt themselves the publishing half. But so has Library B. And maybe you already registered “Blood Streets” with HMan Publishing, just in case you cut your own deal. And Library B might get a deal for another project. So your song has three publishers. So when the horror flick gets shown, how does the PRO know to give the publishing money to Library A? Simple. Library tells the client that the song is called LibA-URB209045. Charming, right? They register the title with you as the songwriter and themselves as publisher. The cue sheet will use that title. (Don’t worry, they’ll probably get it right in the credits.)

So life is sweet. But technology might come along and make it less pleasant. Heard about digital watermarking? It’s just one approach to automating the process of identifying the songs that are played on the air and Internet. And there are lots of geeks busily working on more methods. But they all share one minor problem—your song always looks the same, no matter what title is used. They can’t distinguish between “Blood Streets” and LibA-URB209045 for one single reason—they are the same thing. The same recording is doing several jobs.

This might present a few problems.

There are other arguments against retitling, as this is called, but this one seems to me the most worrisome. Many songwriters won’t do retitling deals. Some won’t do any nonexclusive deals. But nonexclusive is the norm, especially for up and coming songwriters. Getting exclusive deals requires either a track record or some pretty magnificent material (and a lot of patience to connect).

So if you run across a retitling situation, that’s why they exist. What you do about them depends a lot on you. Right now I can’t offer a solution, but it is a situation you need to keep your eye on.

A common question about marketing music is where to send it. How do you find the people who are looking for music? The answer varies, as does the quality of leads you will get.

Let’s talk about tip sheets. Tip sheets are there to tip you off. They announce music placement opportunities. An artist needs a country song that isn’t too country; a movie needs a tune with the same vibe as the Rolling Stone’s “Satisfaction,” or maybe just a party song that kids 18 to 25 would be listening to at college. Whatever information the client provides is what you will get.

Tip sheets come in various flavors and colors. There are online tip sheets, many of which are associated with songwriter groups, such as SongU . There are tip sheets that are tied into some paid service (you have to be a subscriber of their service), such as Sonicbids, Broadjam, or Taxi , that submit songs for you. Typically you will pay something to be a member and then a fee per submission. (Taxi screens the submissions, and even though you pay, they don’t submit anything that doesn’t meet the standard for the placement. They say that helps them maintain credibility.) On a regular basis they post the opportunities and you find that ones that you think are best for you. Typically you won’t get contact information for the client unless you are selected—if then. These services don’t want you going around them, because that is how they earn a living, and furthermore, most of the clients want it that way. You can go to the web sites and see what sort of listings each has. Taxi will happily put you on their email list and send you the listing every month. These are the same listings that members work from and provide a clear idea of the information that is provided—you just can’t submit until you join.

There is a lot of debate over the viability of these services, and although they can look similar, each is quite different in what it offers. There are several other services using a similar business model. You can easily find a lot of disgruntled ex members. A better idea is to contact current songwriter members on the sites (you can typically contact them through a profile page) and ask if it is working for them. Ask how long they’ve been doing it too. Try a cross section and you can eliminate the extreme responses. Most of these work for some people.

Lastly there are tip sheets that are nothing but tip sheets—they provide the facts and contact information for a quarterly or annual fee and the rest is up to you. Although the most useful tip sheets don’t screen your songs, they do screen you. In many cases, such as with New On The Charts , you have to show some credits, indicating that you are something of a pro, before you can subscribe. An online tip sheet called Songlink says: “unsigned writers or new publishers must first supply at least 2 sample demos of their work for subscription approval.” Having to have credits to get the tip sheet might sound like a Catch 22, but, like Taxi’s reasoning, these sheets must ensure that the people feeding them information, managers, producers, A&R people and the like, don’t get swamped with a lot of amateur, or just bad, efforts, or they will undermine their own networking efforts. (You can help them by only submitting appropriate material and not shooting from the hip.)

One tip sheet that is really more for performers looking for recording contracts, but often has tips in other lines is the UK based Bandit Newsletter. When they have songwriting leads, they are typically for cutting edge music. But not always. They have had listings for country songs and ballads. If you go to the web site, a popup menu will let you request a free sample copy.

This is not intended as an exhaustive list of services or tips sheets, just a starter that lets you see where leads can come from. In the next blog we will look at how music libraries really work and how you can take advantage of their invisible leads.

Songwriting is an art, but commercial songwriting is also a craft. Ignore the craft portion of your job at your peril because your competitors do not. Here are seven steps that help ensure that your songs succeed in the marketplace.

1. Write your songs with a goal in mind
2. Rewrite them
3. Arrange them
4. Get feedback
5. Rewrite them again
6. Produce them
7. Keep learning

Writing with a goal in mind should be obvious, but is often a stumbling block for beginning writers. Your  songs must fit in somewhere if you are going to place them. Innovation is wonderful and creative, but you need to demonstrate the ability to fit into existing niches before you’ll get much of a chance to innovate. Make it easy for your clients to like your songs.

Rewriting should be a joy. This is an opportunity to take your ideas and polish them into a gem. Writers say that books are not written, they are rewritten. The same is true of great songs. It is the little touches that come later in the process that make them standout. Not always, of course, but we are talking general rules here.

Feedback provides a sanity check. If you don’t know any pros, there are several professional places you can get high quality reviews and consultations from name writers online, such as at the site of Pat and Pete Luboff. If you belong to an organization like Taxi you even get song critiques as you submit to various markets. Feedback from friends and family is no substitute, even if it helps your ego.

Rewriting again lets you incorporate the feedback that makes sense to you to make the song even better. Remember that at the professional level a tiny improvement can make a huge difference. The devil is in the details.

Producing and arranging, as I pointed out in a previous blog, is essential to capturing the essence of your market niche. If you can’t do this part, work with a producer/arranger who can. After all, you want your client to hear the hit you heard in your head.

Keep learning. There are lots of places to study the craft of writing hits. Seminars are great and interactive. Songwriting circles work for many people. And I am going to recommend one particular book called The Billboard Guide to Writing and Producing Songs That Sell, by Eric Beall that clearly and entertainingly explains a lot that you will want and need to know. There are many other excellent books, but this is current and, in my opinion, exceptional. Being widely read in this area can only help. Other authors with excellent books on the subject are Jason Blume, Jimmy Webb, Pat and Pete Luboff, and John Braheny. I suggest you devour them all. I have profited by multiple readings of all their books.

There is a last step, of course. And although it isn’t on the list, perhaps it is the most important. WRITE THE NEXT SONG.