10. Make your music easy to find! A lot of sites
these days offer you the ability to TAG or META TAG or KEYWORD your
music/presence on their respective sites (SoundCloud, Bandcamp, Tumblr,
Twitter, etc.). Use this seriously. It makes your music easier to find. For
example, as a music supervisor, I deal a lot in “sound alike” searches. For example:
A director says, “I need a song that sounds like Frank Ocean’s ‘Super Rich
Kids,’ what can you suggest?” It’s so much easier to go to a site like
Bandcamp, hit the KEYWORD/TAG “Frank Ocean,” and your music pops up. Which
leads to the next tip….
9. Have contact information on your websites! If
I find a song I like, I often have to move very quickly. What I won’t do is
sort through 50 dead links, old Myspace profiles, your mom’s Gmail address,
your Twitter bio which only says “#teamjesus #teamfollowback,” etc. Create a
central repository for your contact info, like an about.me page (which is free)
and can host links to all of your other sites and more. If I can’t contact you,
I can’t use your music.
8. Have your team (manager, publicist, cousin who handles
your mixtapes) be more professional than you, at minimum! There is
nothing worse than dealing with a manager who knows nothing about the music
business, or a publicist who sends out misspelled and grammatically incorrect
press releases, or a cousin who answers the phone “Yo!” and leaves me wondering
whether or not I’ve called my own cousin who does nothing in the music
business. Professionalism is key.
7. Be responsive! Music licensing and the
film/TV world move very fast usually. We usually have only a day or two to turn
around things and send them back to the parties that we are responsible to
(music executives at film studios, account managers at ad agencies, sound
editors, directors, producers, etc.). For every artist that doesn’t respond
quickly, there’s another two to three I can find immediately that will.
6. Keep your expectations realistic! If you are
an indie artist with no major label backing, no other major film/TV placements,
no real record sales of note (according to Soundscan, not “downloads”), please
don’t expect to be getting thousands of dollars, depending on the placement.
Budgets are not as high as you think! Keep your expectations realistic, and
don’t talk yourself out of some money because you think you’re the next Taylor
Swift and your song is worth $40,000. It’s not.
5. Don’t email me individual mp3 tracks! Don’t
do this. I immediately delete your music. Take advantage of the millions of
options for streaming your music, whether it be via Box.com, Dropbox,
ReverbNation, etc. It’s far easier for me to stream your music, catalog it and
then download it if I want/need to, as opposed to you sending 10 individual
emails with one 10mb mp3 attached to each email….work smarter, not harder
folks.
4. Don’t send me your mixtapes. I tell you this
from the bottom of my heart—most mixtapes are a waste of time, especially if
they are mixtapes where you are writing/singing/rapping over someone else’s
music that you don’t have the rights to. You may be a great singer, but if
you’re singing your “lyrics” over Chris Brown’s “Fine China” instrumental,
there is nothing I can do for you. Spend time and money recording and writing
original music!
3. Know what you’re pitching for! Take the time
to do due diligence and see what my current projects are. If I’m working on a
movie that is a period piece based in the 1940’s, but you’re sending me daily
emails of your EDM-based Pop songs that sound like the current Top 40, then
they are going to the trash.
2. Build Relationships! Take the time to at
least attempt to build your network. Referrals go a long way in this business.
Go to some events. Get some business cards. Promptly follow up. Don’t pester,
but make your presence known. Stay on the radar. Be polite. Be professional.
That’ll get your farther than a spam email ever will.
1. Content is King (and Quality is Queen!). Here
are the keys to the kingdom: If your music is versatile, fits more than one
type of genre and situation, has great lyrics, is all original and has no
samples, has a great hook, builds, tells a story, is professionally mixed,
mastered, and can go straight to screen from my email inbox, and you have
instrumental versions, and clean/radio versions, and has lyrics and contact
information embedded in the mp3 ‘comments’ field, has graphics available for an
on-screen promo, you know all the writers and splits and the publishers if any
that control them, have contact info for any labels that own your master(s), is
registered with the performing rights societies (ASCAP, BMI or SESAC), you have
a website that is clean, professional and easy to navigate, and you’re ready
for radio or a record deal, then 9 out of 10, I will listen to your music,
archive it, and refer back to it in the future if it doesn’t necessarily fit
for a current opportunity.
