EP4 - Tell Me Why You Write Music
We all have our own reasons for writing music and I am really curious to hear yours.
More importantly I wanted you to know what I think is the very best way to get your music out into the world in the biggest way possible.
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- If you want more tips and ideas on how to get your music into tv and film:
https://syncsongwriter.com - For my free cheatsheet that shows you how to connect with the right people in licensing:
https://syncsongwriter.com/guide - To join the Art Of The Song Pitch - a proven step-by-step process that shows you exactly how to license your music to TV & film successfully in precise detail, where we personally introduce you to top music supervisors:
https://artofthesongpitch.com
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
So why do you make music? No, I'm serious. I really want to know.
Why do you make music?
People make music for all kinds of different reasons. Some people want fame, some people are after money. Some people just want to do it for the art. Everybody else seems to fall in between those three poles of this great triangle called music.
So whatever your reason is, you can't answer that for somebody else. I can't answer that for anybody. We all have our own reasons. The one commonality though, that I've discovered is that no matter why you make music, you want to get your music out there, it's a condition of being human. It's like it's just life.
If you look around you in the world, there's all kinds of things going on. Things are changing, things are moving, things are growing. There's. Always something happening. And so music itself just wants to be shared. It's something that brings people together. It lets people understand you in a much deeper way.
There's all of these great benefits and a music supervisor friend of mine told me one time, which I thought was absolutely brilliant, he said that music is the one thing that humans have invented. That hasn't created destruction or caused, you know, all the problems that many of our other inventions have wrought upon the world.
And I think he really hit that nail on the head. So, if you are thinking about getting your music out there, of course there's a million ways you can go about doing that. So you can go after label deals, you can go after publishing deals, you can tour, you can put posters up on polls. There's a million ways that you can do this.
The one way that I've found that works the absolute best for the indie musicians I worked with in the studio trying to just make something happen with the record was sync licensing.
It was fast, it was huge, it was lucrative. And so when you get a sync placement, you get that big sync fee up front, you get the backend royalties, you get this big bump in your fan base, you get the reputations in the industry. It really is such a fantastic way to go. .
But the thing about sync licensing is that sounds really easy, right? What I just described and sounds awesome. It's actually really, really hard. It's difficult to actually get a sync placement. Why is that? Well, because everybody's trying to get a sync placement.
That's the reason - there's a limited number of opportunities out there, even though there's so many opportunities. There's like television 24/7. Cable on top of streaming on top of online production like this. It goes on and on and on.
Then there's ads, and then there's films and there's student films and Hollywood films and, you know, streaming services are making films.
So there's so many more opportunities than there was even just five, 10 years ago. But the thing is, everybody's got a record out and everybody's trying to get into those spots. So if you know the right way to, it definitely is an amazing way to go.
The problem is most people don't know that path or they don't follow that path.
So you might be thinking, Chris, you know, all I gotta do is get my song into a music library. Well, that's great. You could absolutely, like right after you watch this video, you could totally go online and get your music into an online library, non-exclusive, and you'd be in there with thousands or millions of other songs. You're a needle in a haystack, right?
Or you might say, I gotta get a sync agent. Well, you can go get a sync agent. It's hard to get the top ones. And even if you do, you've gotta be on the front burner with them because they have a big roster of a bunch of other artists that they're pitching. If you're not on the front burner with them, then things are not gonna happen the way you think that they're gonna happen.
On top of that, they take a huge cut of your sync fee and your backend royalties often, and some of the contracts are even more onerous than.
So when I was starting out in the studio, working really hard on records for other musicians, any musicians who didn't have labels, didn't have agents, didn't have managers.
The question was, what is the best next, best thing we can do for this album? And that answer was licensing it to TV and film because of all the reasons that I just talked about. So at first when I tried to get into the industry, I had no luck at all. I didn't know anybody. I failed completely.
I was doing all the wrong things and slowly and surely, I eventually got some relationships and then grew more relationships. And now I know a lot, a lot of people in the sync industry and how I do it is introducing indie songwriters directly to music supervisors, which to me is the absolute best way to do that.
It's actually connecting with the gatekeepers so that you're not taking these roundabout routes. You're not competing against all these different people. Uh, middle people aren't taking a cut of your music. You're actually going directly to people who are putting music into TV and film, developing relationships with them, or at least being introduced to them, right through somebody like myself.
Or if you're lucky enough to have an uncle who works in the sync industry, maybe like that. So now I'm gonna circle right back around to the very first question I asked you. Why do you make music? What's your deal? Leave it in the comments right below here. I read every single one. I respond to them all.
And just put it in there right now and I'll see you there. Bye-bye.