{"id":20,"date":"2009-02-13T16:46:47","date_gmt":"2009-02-13T20:46:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/?p=20"},"modified":"2013-10-08T15:50:31","modified_gmt":"2013-10-08T23:50:31","slug":"songwriting-in-a-lousy-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/songwriting-in-a-lousy-economy\/","title":{"rendered":"Songwriting In A Lousy Economy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s hard enough for songwriters when the economy is humming along nicely, but what do you do when it takes a downturn as it has in the last few months?<\/p>\n<p>Most of us don&#8217;t have any delusions of grandeur when it comes to writing hit songs;\u00a0 in fact, many of us are only writing for our own pleasure.\u00a0 But those of you who are still seeking that holy grail hit song, or just a one song publishing deal, might have to re-think your strategy these days.<\/p>\n<p>Publishers stopped hiring new writers a few years back when the songwriting biz started to sour (blame downloading and mp3 players for that one), and now it seems that it&#8217;s almost entirely fruitless to even pitch to publishers.\u00a0 The independent route appears to be the only way to go, which means a lot more leg work and an even longer waiting period for anything to happen.<\/p>\n<p>Here are some ideas:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If you are a songwriter who doesn&#8217;t perform, these days there are so many ways to approach lesser-known artists and bands online through their MySpace pages or homepages.\u00a0 The first question always is, do they write their own material?\u00a0 If they don&#8217;t, or if they do a mix of covers and originals, listen carefully to the songs they perform.\u00a0 Is it what you write?\u00a0 No point in approaching a band or artist in a completely different genre, and that seems perfectly logical, but I have heard of songwriters blindly offering songs with little or not thought to that!<\/li>\n<li>If you would rather meet them in person, consider going out to local venues in your area and getting an idea of what bands and artists are playing.\u00a0 Once you&#8217;ve educated yourself a little, then approach them and ask if they would consider listening to your stuff.\u00a0 And be prepared with a CD in hand!<\/li>\n<li>It seems that synchs (or synchronization contracts) are becoming more and more popular.\u00a0 For instance, getting your song on a television commercial or series can mean a lot of money and ultimately a lot of fame&#8230;look at what 1,2,3,4 did for Fiest on the iPod TV spots!\u00a0 A lot of TV series use artists and bands songs in their shows.\u00a0 If you&#8217;re smart enough, you can find the person on a series who picks the music (usually called the Music Supervisor), and send them some of your music.\u00a0 But&#8230;REMEMBER to do your research;\u00a0 does your music match the kind of music they have already used?<\/li>\n<li>Make use of MySpace and any other music-related pages out there to show off your work.\u00a0 You never know who you might &#8220;meet&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Okay, there are just a few ideas for you to ponder.\u00a0 It&#8217;s hard to stand out these days, and even harder with economic times being so difficult and cut-backs happening everywhere.\u00a0 But remember, in difficult times the general public turns to entertainment to make themselves feel better.\u00a0 So all is not lost&#8230;hang in there!<\/p>\n<p><em>IJ<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s hard enough for songwriters when the economy is humming along nicely, but what do you do when it takes a downturn as it has in the last few months? Most of us don&#8217;t have any delusions of grandeur when it comes to writing hit songs;\u00a0 in fact, many of us are only writing for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[24,25,4,26],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","tag-economy","tag-publishers","tag-songwriting","tag-synchs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prwoq-k","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}