Songwriting Apps 
If you're into apps, these won't necessarily make you a better songwriter, but they might be fun and even inspirational!
Evolver.fm has apps for songwriting for just about every platform.
Click HERE to check them out! ILikeSongs Blog Check out Irene's new Blog I Like Songs where you'll find lots of her favourite old and new songs!
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Songwriting News and Views May 17, 2012 Queen of Disco Dead
Queen of Disco Donna Summer has died at the age of 63. The 'She Works Hard for the Money' hitmaker had reportedly been suffering from cancer and passed away in Florida, according to TMZ.com.
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May 15, 2012 Martina McBride Not Afraid of Tough Topics
How did Martina McBride‘s new duet, “Marry Me,” come about? What led the vocal superstar to focus on songwriting in recent years? And does she consider herself, as Sheryl Crow recently called her, a “badass”?
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May 11, 2012 Remembering Irving Berlin
New York - Irving Berlin, the Dean of American Songwriters, was born 124 years ago today, but what if anything do you know about the man who gave the world 'White Christmas' and many other memorable songs?
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May 10, 2012 Carole King's Songwriting Days Over?
NEW YORK, N.Y. - The voice behind dozens of standards like "It's Too Late," ''You've Got a Friend" and "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" says her music-making days are likely over. Carole King, now a bestselling author, doubts she will ever write another song and suggested that her 2010 "Troubadours Reunion" concert tour with James Taylor would be her last: "It was a good way to go out."
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May 10, 2012 Village People 'Cop' Wins Copyright
LOS ANGELES -- When it comes to compiling a list of the great songwriters of the past 50 years, Victor Willis' name likely wouldn't merit more than an asterisk. Far better known as the cop in the novelty disco act the Village People, Willis is also remembered for a number of drug-related troubles in the early 2000s that nearly up-ended his post-Village People days.
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May 9, 2012 Mother's Day Concert Tribute to Female Songwriters
Here's to the ladies who do far more than lunch.
They're the women who've written music and lyrics for Broadway shows and operettas while largely taking a back seat to male counterparts.
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May 9, 2012 Idaho Songwriters Help Audiences Learn To Listen
Walking up the carpeted stairs to the usually subdued Gamekeeper Lounge on a Tuesday night feels like sneaking backstage at a concert hall. A long row of empty guitar cases line the hallway. Musicians pace up and down the corridor, their guitars slung across their shoulders.
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May 8, 2012 Bacharach and David to Receive Gershwin Prize
Burt Bacharach is calling from the future, but also from the past.
On a hotel telephone across the international date line, the 83-year-old songwriter is on tour in Australia, where it’s tomorrow morning. But he’s happy to zip down memory lane, 55 years back, across Broadway and into the lobby of the Brill Building, the fabled Manhattan song factory where he first crossed paths with Hal David.
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Music Biz ‘N Tech May 2, 2012 What is Apple Hiding from Musicians in iTunes Lawsuit?
A lawsuit between musicians and Universal Music Group may make sealed testimony from the late Steve Jobs about the nature of digital music sales public: Something that Apple is desperately trying to prevent. But why? MORE
May 2, 2012 Major Labels Lose Market Share As Indies Gain
Three of the four major labels lost a slice of their market share in 2011 as the indies gained ground.MORE
May 1, 2012 Digital Song Sales On Fire
Gotye, Justin Bieber and Maroon 5 have stormed the record books in recent weeks, earning three of the top 10 best sales weeks since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking digital downloads in 2003. MORE
April 30, 2012 Judge Dismisses Grammy Lawsuit
A lawsuit filed against the Recording Academy over its decision to trim the Grammy Award categories from 109 to 78 has been dismissed by a judge in New York. MORE
April 26, 2012 Spotify Developing Online Radio
Spotify, the music streaming service, is reportedly developing a U.S. Internet radio service to compete with Pandora, according to a Reuters report. The report claimed the new service would launch before 2013 and would be ad-supported. It also said Spotify has already begun notifying music companies of their plans. MORE
From mi2n
The Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA|AMCOS) has said that it is extremely disappointed with the High Court decision in the iiNet case, which leaves songwriters, composers and music publishers in the unacceptable situation of remaining exposed to illegal online file-sharing. MORE
From Music Week
A German court has ordered YouTube to install filters preventing users from uploading some copyright music videos. The Google-owned site could now face a huge bill over unpaid royalties. MORE
CD Sales Falling - From BBC Newsbeat
CD sales have seen a significant year-on-year drop in the first three months of 2012, according to figures from the BPI and the Official Charts Company. Sales fell 25% from 20.5 million in the first three months of 2011, to 15.3 million this year. MORE
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Need some real feedback on your song? If you are interested in receiving a live critique, please email me to request a date and time. The critique will be live using Skype, and I request that you make a small donation of $10 using the Paypal button below.
The session will be approximately 1/2 hour in length. You can play your song live, or play a recording of it, and I will require a copy of the lyrics as well. Or, if you would rather not do it live, just email me an mp3 of your song and the lyrics, and I will respond within 48 hours. Sending lyrics or music only is okay too.
I will email you some questions ahead of time so that I can get a sense of your songwriting experience and your goals.
IJ
I did an article once called Songs That Break The Rules, giving some examples of songs that went outside the lines in terms of doing things that you are often told NOT to do when writing a song. Songwriters get a little riled up when it comes to the word “rules”, but I think there’s a lesson to be learned from understanding those “rules” and then going beyond them and finding your own songwriting voice in spite of them.
Certain things just don’t work, and there’s a good reason that they don’t work. Not very many people want to listen to crazy, unorganized noise. I suppose some do, but that’s beside the point  . Once you figure out what works, you’re ahead of the game. The songwriters I often admire are those who take those rules and turn them upside down, and STILL come up with a great song.
Recently I was asked to work out a song for a guitar class called “Late Bloomer” by Canadian songwriter Sarah Harmer. I’ve heard her songs before and like her style, and she’s definitely got a distinctive voice. When I was teaching it to the class, one of my students commented on how it was tricky to sing because of the way Sarah emphasises certain words in it. You might think that’s a bad thing…because how many times have you been told (by myself and others!) that you can’t put the emPHAsis on the wrong syLLAble? In other words, you need to make the music work with the natural stresses of the lyric.
Well, Sarah breaks this rule all the time, but it works! There’s a line in the first verse ”oh, late bloomer, the rumours were true”. The first time she sings it, her melody matches the stresses just as if you were reading the line; OH, late BLOOMer, the RUmours were TRUE. But the second time she emphasizes it differently; OH, late BLOOMer, THE ruMOURS were TRUE. And in the second verse, she does it again in the second line; to read it you would see “it was NOTHing to be ALways LEFT beHIND”. But her emphasis is “it was noTHING to be ALways LEFT beHIND”, putting the emphasis on the last syllable of the word ‘nothing’ instead of where it naturally occurs.
Continue reading When “Broken” Rules Work
I was at a funeral for an old acquaintance yesterday and on the way home it occurred to me that there were a lot of lines and phrases spoken by others that I could easily use in a song lyric some time in the future. Quite often you may have come across the idea of reading or watching TV or seeing a movie to find some inspiration, but the truth is that your very own life is probably a great source if you handle it just right.
Of course, many of you already write about your own life, and many songs you’ve heard over the years are a reflection of the writer’s life, not just fiction. But instead of writing about the typical things like love, loss, partying (:-)) and every other clichéd topic, there are probably events or snippets of conversation happening around you all the time that might make for interesting lyrics. So any of you out there complaining (and many of you do!) that you don’t have anything to write about, maybe you only need to open your ears and eyes a little more. Almost anything can inspire a song lyric if you know what to do with it.
For instance, one thing that was said yesterday by the brother of the person who passed away was that in losing his brother, he learned something about him, and he also remembered something that he had forgotten. The “new” learning came in the form of stories that people told him after his brother died. The thing he had forgotten was how he had always thought of his brother as his hero. I could see turning that into an idea for a song. Another idea that came to me was when the pastor spoke about how we only know a part of a person, and when we get together during such an occasion, the memories others have, when we put them all together, paint a much more complete picture of that person.
Do you see what I mean? Whatever lyric came out of that wouldn’t even have to be about death, only about getting to know someone, or a kind of philosophy of life.
I’m not even afraid to share these ideas with you because I know that if you use them, you would probably write a completely different song than I would Years ago I used to lead a kind of online songwriting workshop on a songwriting message board I used to hang out on, where I would get everyone to submit a song title. Then we’d vote on the title and have a week or two to write a song around that title. Sometimes it wasn’t a title, but just a lyric idea. It was a great exercise, but what it taught me most was how completely different all of the songs were that came out of it.
So take something from my experience above, if you like, or pay more attention to your own experiences and don’t be afraid to share them. You never know where you’ll find a new song!
 Songwriters Circle (Photo credit: AndyRobertsPhotos) For the umpteenth time I have received an email from a songwriter who has been mislead by a so-called “publisher” showing interest in their songs. It’s not the showing interest that’s bad, it’s the thing they do next: they follow up by asking the songwriter to pay them money to “re-demo” their song(s).
Fortunately the red flags went up this time and the songwriter emailed me to ask my opinion. I told him exactly what I tell every other songwriter that emails me with a similar story; run the other way! This is how these companies make their money, not by successfully pitching songs to artists, but by making money from the “re-demos”. And what does the songwriter get? Another demo of their songs and a big bill.
Pay attention to this: if ANYONE asks you for money to pitch or re-demo your songs, don’t do it! There ARE professional legitimate song pitchers out there, but they work an entirely different way and the chances are you wouldn’t know about them until you had some kind of track record for successful songs already.
I always recommend checking out the publication “Songwriter’s Market” for a better chance at finding more legitimate publishers. It comes out annually and lists publishers and record labels in many genres, and keeps pretty up-to-date on all of them. It also has a number of really good articles on the do’s and don’ts of pitching your music, so it’s worth the price just for that. You can find the book in your local bookstore, or you can buy it from Amazon. If you want to support my website, you can also buy the latest edition through my store by clicking here.
Here are some other tips when it comes to looking for a publisher:
Continue reading Pay Me $250 to Re-demo Your Song!
 Image via CrunchBase I read an article today on a music marketing website that had to do with finding new fans online. It basically said not to wait for fans to find you, but to seek them out by looking for similar artists to yourself on websites that you have your music on, like Reverbnation or MySpace. The author said to “reach out” to these other artists’ fans.
While I see the importance of marketing yourself and your music when you’re a performing artist or in a band, I do think that some of this can backfire on you if you don’t know how to go about it or when to stop. As an example, I had a songwriter who emailed me a month or so ago about a song that he had placed in some kind of online contest. He wanted votes for his song. Now, first of all think of this: if you are trying to get people who don’t know you to vote for your song, what if they don’t like it? I mean, that is a possibility! They might end up voting for someone else. There’s a backfire right there. So solicit people that you already know like your music. That’s the first step.
I did not go to the site to listen to his song because I basically didn’t have time at that point. So I pretty much ignored his email, which was generic in nature anyway. In other words, mine was in a long list of emails, he didn’t email me specifically. But even after I ignored it, he didn’t stop at that. He emailed again, presumably to the same number of email addresses saying that he had reached a semi-final with his song and he needed votes again. And then I got a third email, as he was still looking for votes. So this time, I politely emailed for him to please remove me from his email list.
Continue reading Finding New Fans Can Backfire
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