To kick off the New Year, I spent the last two weeks with my good friend and songwriting partner, MJ.   We spent most of our time together working on several new tracks and collaborating in the studio.  MJ and I have been making music together since I was a Sophomore in High School and MJ was a Junior. MJ has performed and sang vocals on multiple tracks I’ve placed over the years.

We had a really fun, productive visit and it got me thinking about the pros and cons of collaborating with other musicians.  I don’t really co-write that often these days, but when I do, especially with the right person, it’s a really enjoyable process that brings a new creative dimension to the songwriting process, with results that are often above and beyond what I’m able to do in isolation. 

Of course, collaborating with the wrong musician can also be a painful process where you’re constantly butting heads. Collaborating with the wrong person can slow down the songwriting process and hinder creativity.  It’s important to choose your co-writers wisely.

Today, let’s look at the pros and cons of co-writing and collaborating, starting with the PROS:

Pros

Synergy – There’s a synergy that happens when you get two or more people together that simply can’t be duplicated when you’re alone.  There’s something about being together in the same space and bouncing ideas off each other in real time that you just can’t get when you’re working on music in solitude.  Which isn’t to say you can’t write or create great music alone, you of course can, but the process is very different when you add other people to the mix.  We all have our own unique way of looking at things and it can be extremely valuable to have someone else give input and direction during the songwriting process, especially during moments where you’re feeling stuck or not sure where to go. 

For example, one of the tracks I collaborated on with my friend MJ during our most recent visit (which I’ll link to below), was about 75% complete already when we met up, but I was stuck on the bridge in particular, and wasn’t quite sure where to go.  I had a bridge that just didn’t seem to take the song anywhere new, it was sort of boring and really similar to the verses and chorus.  MJ pointed out this out and suggested we try something a little different and start on a minor chord instead of the major chord I had for the beginning of that section.  We bounced ideas back and forth for about fifteen minutes and we ended up coming up with a bridge we both really love, that was completely different than the rest of the song, but still fit perfectly.  I most likely would have never approached the section the way we did had I been left to my own devices.

Immediate Feedback – Another great aspect of collaborating is the ability to get immediate, real time feedback about your songs and musical ideas.  Music is of course subjective, but it’s helpfule to know how other people respond to your tracks.  Especially if it’s someone whose musical sensibilities you respect.  When MJ and I got together for our most recent co-writing and collaborating sessions, I played him several tracks I had been working on to see which ones he was most excited about.  I ended up playing one song I started two years ago that had been just sort of sitting, collecting dust and MJ immediately responded to it positively.  I hadn’t really even thought much about the track until I played it for MJ and he perked up instantly.  I had been sort of on the fence about the track, as it’s much more poppy than what I normally write, and I was worried it might be a little on the “cheesy” end, but MJ immediately convinced me otherwise.  Having a fresh set of ears to provide this sort of instant feedback can be very valuable and gives you a broader perspective of your music.

Social Outlet – The life of a songwriter/composer can be a bit lonely at times.  Many of us spend countless hours in our home studios alone, plugging away at our craft.  These moments in solitude can of course yield inspired results, many of my best musical ideas have been born in solitude.  But, doing this day after day, year after year, can also become lonely and isolating.  One of the great benefits of collaborating and co-writing are the relationships and the socializing that happen as a result.  Many of my best friends throughout my life have happened as a result of musical collaboration.  It’s just more fun to make music with other people, and I got into this business to enjoy myself, not to become a music making recluse.

Cons

Although, co-writing can be a great experience, it can also be a frustrating experience if you don’t mesh well with your co-writer.  I suppose it’s like any relationship, you need to have a certain amount of chemistry and connection for the co-writing relationship to work smoothly.  It goes without saying if you’re going to be co-writing you should seek out co-writers that you click with, but even in the best-case scenario there are things about the co-writing process that could be looked at as negatives. 

Let’s take a look at a few things to watch out for when co-writing:
 
Creative Differences
When you’re writing music alone, you get to call the shots.  If you’re a bit of a control freak like me, this is extremely liberating.   One of the potentially frustrating things about co-writing, if you’re at all like me, is that there are going to be times where you and your co-writer look at things differently.  It’s inevitable. This is of course the whole point of co-writing, to have two sets of creative eyes and ears come together, where the sum ends up being greater than the individual parts.  The Beatles became the legendary group they became because of this sort of creative synergy.  Of course, The Beatles also fought and had creative differences and would break up after just ten years as a band due in part to their creative and personal differences.  That and Yoko.

Many bands throughout rock and roll history have succumbed to these sorts of creative and artistic differences. Watch any documentary about pretty much any rock and roll band and a part of their story usually involves intense creative differences between bands members.  Pink Floyd, Oasis, Guns N Roses, Van Halen, Chicago, Kiss, Simon And Garfunkel, The Yardbirds, Aerosmith, The Smashing Pumpkins, Journey, The Kinks, The Beach Boys and many more, have famously dealt with creative and personal differences as part of their history.  It almost seems like a certain amount of creative tension is a pre-requisite for success in commercial music.  Or, perhaps, where there’s a yin there’s always a yang. 

My take, after many years of writing music both with other people and alone, is that you simply have to take the good with the bad.  Any relationship involving more than one person involves a certain amount of compromise and give and take.  The co-writing relationship is no exception.  For the co-writing relationship to work, you have to be open to other ideas and input. 

A part of this is simply maturity and openness to other ideas.  When I was younger, my knee jerk reaction to people wanting to change my ideas was resistance and shutting them down. Now, I’m much more open to hearing people out and giving their ideas a chance.  I might not ultimately agree with everything that’s suggested, but I’m open to trying anything musically to see if it works.  When both co-writers have this sort of open and flexible approach you can get to really interesting places creatively that you can’t get to on your own. 

Business Differences
Another pitfall to watch out for when working with co-writers and collaborators is differences when it comes to the business side of music.  These issues have been the downfall for many creative partnerships over the years.  When I write music alone, in addition to making any creative decision I want, I’m also free to make any business decision I deem appropriate. I can take chances business-wise and make decisions that I might not be able to if I have another person’s opinion to contend with.  I don’t have to run new contracts by other people that might have veto power.  Being a free agent comes with a certain amount of freedom you don’t have when working with other people who might not have the same vision.

Like dealing with creative differences, differences when it comes to business issues need to be dealt with maturely with an openness and ability understanding where the other person is coming from.  I strive to be as fair as possible when it comes to these matters so there are no hard feelings and so ultimately everyone feels good about the situation.  For example, I tend to do a 50/50 split with co-writers on all monies earned, even if in my mind, I wrote 75% of the song.  My theory is that any small change in the song could make the difference in the song working or not working, and it’s impossible in retrospect to know what elements of the song make the song work.  For example, the perfect bridge could be the difference between a song becoming successful or not, even if all the other elements, that I wrote, were “perfect”. 

I’d rather err on the side of caution and be overly generous than squabble about trying to figure out who contributed what, exact percentage of each song.  I find that in long term partnerships these things tend to balance themselves out anyway.  Maybe I contribute more to one track in terms of songwriting, but my co-writer does more in terms of the production.  Or maybe I contribute more on one track, and the next track my partner contributes more to and so on.

In Summary
In my mind, the pros of co-writing tend to outweigh the negatives.  I end up with new material that is much different than what I’m able to do on my own and when things go well, I also end up with strengthened friendships and partnerships. Done right, co-writing, is a win-win.

Here’s one of the tracks MJ and I collaborated on during our recent two week visit called "Light Ahead".  This track actually came to me, in large part, in a dream a couple years ago. I woke up at about 4 am, stumbled to my guitar and managed to remember the verse and chorus I had dreamed, sans lyrics.

MJ, in addition to helping write the bridge, also sings lead vocals, harmony vocals and played piano, engineered and co-produced the track.  I played guitar and bass and sang a harmony part on the chorus.   We hope you like it.  

Without further adieu, Light Ahead:

Over the years I’ve worked with hundreds of musicians from a variety of backgrounds.  I’ve also had the pleasure of interviewing over 100 different songwriters, producers, publishers and so on for my podcast and website.

I’ve had the chance to see first-hand what goes into creating numerous successful indie music careers in both licensing and beyond, and although there is a lot of common ground in terms of what contributes to a musician becoming successful in 2019, no two stories are exactly alike.  Although hard work, persistence, dedication and an “eye of the tiger”, never give up sort of attitude are shared by all, there are a variety of ways to become successful in a variety of different niches.

One of the keys to success in the modern-day music business is finding your niche.  Finding the particular part of the industry that you best fit into and can thrive in.  I don’t think anyone can really teach you how to find your niche.  It’s something each one of us has to figure out on our own, through trial and error.  My niche might not be your niche and vice versa. 

It’s sort of like dating.  There are lots of different types of people out there, and not everyone fits with everyone else.  I tend to click with Latin and Spanish women.  Almost all of my serious relationships have been with Latin women.  Of course, this doesn’t mean all men are going to click with Latin women.  There’s something about my laid-back musician vibe and the carpe diem (seize the day) sort of approach to life that many Latin women possess that seems to work well together.  But that’s me.  What works for you or someone else is obviously going to be completely different based on personality, tastes, background etc.

I feel like finding your niche in music is similar.  Part of finding your niche will obviously be based on your unique background, skill-set and interests.  My niche is writing singer/songwriter/indie-folk vocal tracks.  That’s what I enjoy doing the most and it’s what I tend to focus on the most.  As a result, I’ve had the most success with these types of songs.  I’ve had a few other styles placed here and there over the years, but my niche, my bread and butter, has been my own blend of singer/songwriter/indie/folk music.

What’s your niche?  Do you know?  Are there one or two styles you really excel in?  Have you figured out one or two niches within the licensing world that you can focus on and dominate in?  Or are you all over the map, not quite sure where you fit in?

If you’re not sure yet, that’s ok too.  Part of the journey to success in music involves trial and error, experimenting and trying different things, until you find what best works for you.  Sometimes we just stumble onto a niche through dumb luck.  For example, when I first got started in music-licensing I stumbled upon the niche of writing music for soap operas by accident.  The first publisher I worked with, and still work with to this day, places a lot of music in soap operas.  For the first few years of my licensing career, I placed music in soaps exclusively.  I wrote music for The Young & The Restless, All My Children and One Life To Live.  Eventually I was able to branch out into other shows and projects, commercials and video games.  But getting music placed in soaps is surprisingly pretty lucrative and I was able to make great money from this niche alone for several years.  I still get music placed in soaps to this day.  The Young & The Restless, in particular, use my music frequently. 
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Check out this Y &R playlist for the current season that features my track, Be On My Mind, for an example of a recent song of mine I’ve used. Track #7 below.

So, one of my niches has been vocal tracks in soap operas.  But again, this niche might not work for you.  Your music might not work in the context of these shows.  Perhaps your music would best work somewhere else, in a completely different niche.  This is something you’ll need to explore and figure out.

Here are some examples of a few other niches that writers and composers I work with have discovered.

Royalty Free Music Libraries
I worked with a client recently who informed me they were bringing in an average of 5k a month from just two royalty free music libraries.  The libraries are both well known, easy to find royalty free libraries that are both pretty easy to get accepted into.  I won’t tell you the exact libraries and give away my clients source of income, but there are plenty of royalty free music libraries to choose from.  Just Google “royalty free music libraries” and hundreds of sites will come up.

A lot of writers sort of look down on these types of libraries due to the fact that they sell music so cheaply.  I used to have this attitude as well.  But, then again, this is a case where it’s more about quantity than quality and although I’m not big on cranking out mediocre tracks just to pay the bills, I’m all for writers figuring out how to support themselves from their music.  This particular writer came to me because he was looking to branch out and expand his licensing work int other areas.  But, hey, having a consistent 5k a month coming in from royalty free tracks is nothing to scoff at.

Rockabilly
I’ve talked about my buddy Chuck Hughes a lot on my blog over the years, because he’s a great example of an artist who has found a successful niche.  Chuck and his band “The Hillbilly Hellcats” create very well produced and well-crafted Rockabilly music and Chuck has done a great job at getting tons of placements for his and their music over the years.  Over 3,500 placements last time we talked! I think one of the main reasons Chuck has done so well in licensing, apart from the fact that his music is great, is that Chuck’s music addresses a specific niche in terms of genre; rockabilly.  Rockabilly might not be the first style that comes to mind when you think of music licensing, but Chuck’s music has been used thousands of times in TV shows and commercials.  He's a big fish in a relatively small pond you could say.

Check out my recent conversation with Chuck about his success in licensing here:
https://musicmoneyandlife.podbean.com/e/3500-tv-film-placements-and-over-2-million-spotify-streams-with-chuck-hughes-of-the-hillbilly-hellcats/

Re-Records
My producer, Gary Gray, has discovered a lucrative niche within the licensing world, which is doing re-records for companies like Disney and 20th Century Fox.  Gary has been contracted to do multiple re-records of well known, existing songs for use in commercials, tv and films.  I’m not sure if I’m at liberty to say how much Gary earns from these projects, but suffice it to say, it’s a very lucrative niche.

Commercials
I’ve worked with and have created composers with a couple different composer/writers that have specialized in writing music for commercials.  This is a great niche if you can break in.  Commercials tend to pay more than songs used in TV Shows.  In some cases substantially more.
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To learn more about this niche, check out my podcast with Michael Lande from Orange Music:

Production / Instrumental Music
Another niche I’ve seen multiple writers excel in is music that could broadly be defined as “production music”, or as Joel Feinberg from De Wolfe music described it on my podcast, “functional music”.  Music that serves a function.  I’ve worked with multiple writers/composers who have carved out careers in this specific niche, creating background music for use in TV shows.  Like royalty free music, this is a case where you need a lot of music for the math to make sense, in terms of creating revenue. The good news is these tracks are much easier to create quickly and efficiently than fully produced vocal tracks with real instruments.

Youtube
I created a course with a composer who makes a full time living just from Youtube ad revenue alone. Dhruva Aliman is a composer from California who figured out how to generate enough ad revenue from his Youtube videos alone to support himself.  He teaches you how to do it here.
 
Spotify
I’m sure we’ve all heard about Spotify by now.  Although we all know how little Spotify pays per stream,  if you get enough streams, it adds up. I’ve worked with several different artists now who have figured out how to generate substantial revenue from Spotify by getting millions of streams.

Check out these recent podcasts for two examples of artists getting millions of streams on Spotify and how they did it:

https://musicmoneyandlife.podbean.com/e/16-million-spotify-streams-by-connecting-with-social-media-influencers/

https://musicmoneyandlife.podbean.com/e/how-one-artist-generated-20-million-streams-on-spotify-and-makes-a-full-time-living-from-his-music/
 
These are just a few niches to consider.  There are many more areas you could look into within the niche of music licensing.  Things like creating trailer music, specializing in other specific genres, creating your own music library and so on are all worth exploring.

Ultimately, a big part of success is figuring out what niche or niches you can excel in and doubling down on those.  It’s hard to get any real traction in this business if you’re all over the place.  It’s sort of like life in general I suppose.  

I turned 45 years old a few months ago.  Although I still feel more or less the same as I did 20 years ago, and as far as I know I’m still in good health, the truth is that with each passing year, my chances of becoming the next Justin Bieber decline.  Not that my chances of becoming the next Justin Bieber were ever very good.  But each passing year, I am forced to come to terms with the fact that my dream of becoming a teen heartthrob/pop star are slowly diminishing. 

Jokes and sarcasm aside.  Just like you, I’m getting older each passing day, each passing month and each passing year.  Let’s talk about what it’s like getting older in the music business and how our age affects our role within the music industry.

First, let’s be honest with ourselves.  Becoming a rock or pop star at any age is a one in a million sort of endeavor.  The odds of “making it” in the music business arguably get harder as you get older, but it’s not really easy or likely (statistically speaking) at any age.  Most musicians don’t become as famous as Justin Bieber or Taylor Swift at any age, and the odds are even more against you as you get older.

So, although the mainstream music business is arguably a very youth and looks oriented business.  Most artists never become mainstream at all anyway.  Most artists will remain in the realm of “indie” artist throughout their careers.  According to my research, only about .4 percent of artists make it into the “mainstream”.

That’s the bad news I guess you could say.  But it’s also sort of liberating when you think about it.  Screw the mainstream music business is what I’ve always said.  Actually, I’ve never said that, but I’m going to start saying it, because, the reality is although “making it” in the music business was always a long shot with the odds stacked against us, making a career out of music isn’t, and it’s something we can do at any age. in many ways it actually gets easier and more likely the older you get and there’s new data coming out that suggests it’s never been a better time to be an “indie” artist.

The Advantage Of Age
The reason age is advantageous in terms of building an “indie” music career is because building a viable music career takes time.  Let’s take something like licensing.  Licensing, although a competitive industry, is still a totally viable way of making money with your music.   The main obstacle in terms of building up income with something like licensing is time.  It takes time to create music.  It takes time to network and build contacts.  It takes time to build up a revenue stream from music that’s sustainable. It can take years to build up a licensing catalog to the point where it generates a sustainable revenue stream and as the years accumulate, you will of course be getting older.  I think most musicians who fail to make it in something like licensing, simply give up too soon.

The good news is that, for the most part, no one really cares how old you are when it comes to something like music licensing.  No one has ever asked my age when screening my tracks and to the best of my knowledge no one really cares.

Age is also an advantage in terms of simply getting better at the craft of writing and playing music.  It takes time to learn and master an instrument.  It takes time to excel at songwriting and composition.  There’s really no end to growth in either of these endeavors.  I feel like I get better at songwriting with each passing year.  I have more life experience to draw from.  I have more to write about.  I have more to say.  The same is true in terms of my skill as a guitar player.  I continue to improve each year and I feel like I’m playing much better now than I ever have because I’m continually racking up more and more hours as a guitar player.
 
Also, depending on what style of music you play, age isn’t necessarily a factor in terms of playing music live.  For example, I’m really into jambands, blues and jazz, in addition to songwriting.  These genres are much less age-centric than mainstream pop and rock.  There are plenty of thirty, forty and fifty somethings and beyond, playing live in these genres.  Of course, having time and youth on your side never hurts. It’s arguably easier to deal with the stress and overall lifestyle of pursuing a live music career when you’re younger.  But don’t discount the wisdom and maturity that comes with age. 

In many ways I’m grateful I didn’t go further as a performing musician when I was younger, because I don’t think I was mature enough in my twenties and early thirties to deal with the lifestyle in a healthy way. In retrospect, I could have easily fallen into a very unhealthy lifestyle in terms of things like alcohol and sleep deprivation had I had more “success” when I was younger. Thank God I didn’t.

With age comes experience and wisdom.  And although I’m not currently touring, I still perform live an average of once a week and I always make it home at a reasonable time and manage to get in a full nights sleep and wake up refreshed and hydrated, bright eyed and bushy tailed.

My buddy Chuck Hughes from the Hillbilly Hellcats (see previous podcast here) didn’t start touring until he was 45, my age now.  Now in his 60s, Chuck was able to carve out a great indie career both touring and licensing his music, and he didn’t even get started touring extensively until he was 45! 

​One of my favorite guitarists, from one my favorite bands, Nels Cline of Wilco, is 63 years old.  Nels didn’t join Wilco until 2004, when he was 48!  The music business is filled with examples like this, if you know where to look. 

​Focus On Building A Career
One of the reasons I’ve focused so extensively on things like licensing and simply becoming a better musician and songwriter, is that I want to focus on things I can control.  I don’t need the added pressure of worrying about getting too old hanging over me.   It’s hard enough creating a viable music career as it is, without worrying about something that’s inevitable and completely out of my control.

The bottom line: Don’t let something as natural and inevitable as aging deter you from pursuing and doing what you love.  I’m a big believer that having things in your life that you’re passionate and fired up about will actually keep you younger and more youthful longer.  There’s absolutely no reason to stop doing something like creating and performing music just because you reach a certain age.

It might be too late to become the next Justin Bieber or Taylor Swift, but it’s never too late to keep doing what you love.  If you’re still alive, you can still make music.

Earlier this year I had one of the best single months financially I’ve had in my adult life.  Multiple things were firing on all cylinders.  I got a big fat licensing check.  My business was rocking. I was making good money from performing live.  Money from a few different endeavors I invested in started to come in. Things were going so well that I decided on a whim to take my girlfriend on vacation for a week in the Caribbean.  We spent the week surfing, eating out, drinking beer, watching movies, reading and relaxing.  It was a magical week.  One of the best weeks I’ve had in a long time. Maybe ever. You ever have a week like that? Where everything just seems to line up.

The best thing about this week was I felt like it was well deserved since I had spent several months, and really several years, leading up to this and planting all the seeds that came to fruition.  I didn’t just go drink beer on a beach.  I worked really hard and then went and drank beer on a beach.    There’s a distinct difference in feeling between the two.  The latter being much more rewarding.

In contrast to earlier this year, last month was one of the slowest months I’ve had in a long time.  By this point, I’m used to the ups and downs and the highs and lows of being a self-employed musician/entrepreneur.  It comes with the territory. In fact, I’ve been through this cycle of things going up and down so long, that it no longer really fazes me the way it used to.  Of course, I prefer it when things are going “well”.  I’d prefer to have more money than less.  I’d prefer to sell more songs than fewer songs.  I prefer being up to being down.  But these ups and downs no longer really stress me out anymore, at least not nearly as much.  I don’t even look at “down” periods anymore as failing.  It’s just part of the cycle of life.

I haven’t had a boss in ten years.  I’m used to dealing with the stress and uncertainty of being a self-employed musician at this point.  However, it used to really get to me.  I used to sort of freak out and panic a little (ok, a lot) whenever things took a turn for the worse.  It took me years to build up enough confidence in myself and my endeavors to be able to relax and ride out the down periods.  I had to live through the periods of things going up and then down and then up again, enough times, to realize that it’s really just the nature of life.  Especially for the self-employed among us.  Things fluctuate.

So, I think one of the first steps to dealing with “failure” in life is to step back and really think about what it means to “fail”.  Last month was really slow in terms of both licensing music and my businesses.  Through some sort of strange confluence of cosmic events, everything just seemed to slow down last month.  Interestingly, I went back and looked at my records, and last June more or less the same thing happened.  So, this could just be a seasonal thing. Or perhaps the warmer weather makes me a bit less motivated.  Either way, when things slow down, for whatever reason, it gets my attention.  But I don’t panic anymore, and I don’t take it personally.

After all, did I “fail” because I had a month that was slower than previous months?  Of course not, after all I didn’t make nothing.  I still was able to pay my bills.  I just wasn’t as successful as other periods.  Both success and failure are relative.

The other thing to realize, is that even when you do “fail”, by your own standards, it’s still just a stepping stone to future success, if you keep moving forward.  Like I said, the first part of the year was one of the best periods I’ve had in business and music, and just things in general, in a long time.  But this “success” was really the result of having lived through a lot of periods of “failing”.  I had to try a lot of different things and fail many times in the process, in order to arrive at what worked.  You have to “fail”, in order to succeed.  In fact, you could really just look at your temporary failures as a part of the larger process that leads to success.

None of us are hitting home runs 100 percent of the time.  We all have ups and downs in life.  Stay strong during the periods where you feel like you’re “failing” and stay humble and grateful during the periods you feel like you’re on top.

In the past, whenever things weren’t going the way I wanted and I would start to get stressed, I would imagine a time where I had the financial stability I craved and the external success I imagined I was working towards.  Only then, I thought, would I be able to experience the sort of mental and emotional stability I thought having more money would bring me.  And don’t get me wrong, having more money does bring a sense of relief and a sense of freedom, especially if you’ve been stressed about not having enough.

However, the real power, I would eventually learn, isn’t so much in trying to control the size of my bank account.  The real power is in controlling my reaction to the events that occur on a day to day, week to week and month to month basis that are outside my control. After all, this is the only thing we can really control.
Because, at the end of the day, we can’t entirely control our external reality.  Sometimes things just happen, things outside of our control that effect both our bottom line and our sense of how “successful” we feel.  Sometimes we lose clients.  Sometimes we lose partners.  Sometimes opportunities come and go.  Sometimes, despite our best efforts, things don’t go the way we want them to.

There are few things you can always count on in life.  But you can always count on yourself.
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Stay calm and keep hustling.
 
 
 

There are a lot of different niches within the niche of music licensing.  There’s “stock” music, “production” music, artist music, trailer music, ad music, video game music and more.   How do you know where to start?  What kind of music should you be writing if you’re new to licensing?

When you’re first starting out, if you’re not writing music for a specific person or a specific project, you’ll most likely just be writing the kind of music you’re inspired to write and the styles of music you’re good at.  That’s how I started.  I wrote a batch of pop/rock songs and sent them to the person who ended up becoming my publisher.  Of the initial batch of four songs I wrote, my publisher loved one of them.  I signed one track, she pitched it to a TV Show and within about three weeks I landed my first placement.

Over time, as I figured out the needs of my publisher’s clients, I was able to write more and more music that worked for the places and projects my publisher pitched to.  A lot of the songs I wrote were simply songs that I was inspired to write, that I intuitively felt would work.  Other songs were songs that I wrote “on spec”.  Meaning my publisher would give me specific assignments and specific music requests, based on what she needed and thought I would be a good fit for, that I would create music for specifically. 

Over the years, I’ve written Goth Rock, Punk Rock, Singer/Songwriter, Christmas Music, Folk Music, Ad Music and more, all on spec.  A lot of these tracks have gone on to be placed, and many of them are still being licensed frequently.  By anticipating the needs of publishers and supervisors and creating music that you know they are specifically looking for, you increase the odds of your music being used substantially.  If you just write a song you just feel like writing, and then pitch it after the fact, you may or may not find a home for it, depending on a wide range of factors, like the style of the song, the subject matter, the mood of the song and of course, the needs of those you’re pitching music to.

When you write music on spec, you’ll know that there’s an actual need for the kind of music you’re writing.  Right off the bat, your likelihood of licensing your music goes up, because there’s an actual need and demand for the music you’re writing.  You’re not just shooting in the dark. When you’re not writing for a specific project, it’s more of a crap-shoot in terms of if and when the music ends up being synced.  You can of course anticipate the general types of situations and themes that tend to come up within the context of licensing, but how these songs end up being used is anyone’s guess.

These days, I write a lot of music.  I write music almost every day.  I write music that I feel like writing and I’m inspired to write, and I also write music for specific projects, specific publishers and so on, whenever I’m asked to write something that’s in my wheelhouse.  I like the challenge of being given a specific theme, style or topic and then trying to get inspired around a specific idea.  It’s different than they way my creative process tends to work by default.

Normally, when I sit down to write a song, I pick up my guitar and start strumming a few chords.  Once I lock into a chord progression I like, normally I’ll start developing a melody to fit the chord progression I’ve come up with.  Then, after I’ve established a chord progression and melody, if it’s a vocal song, the lyrics will be the last to come.  Usually the lyric is the most challenging part for me.  I’ll typically just write a few “dummy” lyrics that work rhythmically, and then once I figure out what the song is actually about, I’ll start crafting what hopefully, in the end is a poetic and impactful lyric.

When I’m given a specific topic and/or title for a song, it changes the creative process substantially.  Instead of embarking on a journey of discovering what a song is about, and letting the idea and lyrics come to me, after the music is written, I’m starting with a theme and/or lyric suggestion and then writing music to fit that.  It’s more or less turning the way I tend to write songs on its head.  It’s not necessarily good or bad, it’s just different.  The challenge is making sure these songs don’t sound forced or contrived.
 
Here’s an example of a song I just finished that I wrote on spec for my publisher.  This song was written based on a conversation my publisher had with my producer and I regarding the types of songs I’ve been placing the most through her, and the types of songs she needs going forward.  It’s a good idea to touch base with the publishers and libraries you write music for, every few months or so, and try to get a feel for their needs, what’s working, what’s not working and so on.

Here were the notes from the call, that we based the following song on:
​
"I'm looking for songs from Aaron that have to do with first love, first date, spark of romance, but not love yet." 
 
"Something About You - that would be a good working title. Perfect first date song. Have him write a song called Something About You.  People are still strangers wanting to get to know each other. First spark. Forward motion, earthy, acoustic, like Headed Home." 
 
"Something good for Hallmark, Valentine's Day, any new romance or relationship." 
 
So, based on this conversation, and the notes we had, I got to work writing a song called “Something About You”.   This particular song took me a little longer to write than what’s usual for me.  I spent a good week or so fleshing out the chords and lyrics.   I felt a bit stumped at first, but it ended up being one of my favorite, recent songs of mine. 

It’s a song I probably would have never written had I not been given the “assignment”.  That’s the fun of writing music on spec, you end up with music in your catalog you never would have created had you been left to your own devices.  Sometimes the results are less than spectacular and other times you end up surprising yourself, by writing a song you never knew you had in you.

Without further adieu, here’s my latest track, “Something About You”.  We just finished this one a few days ago, so no word yet on where it will be used.  This track, as usual, was produced and engineered by Gary Gray, and also features harmony vocals by Chicago based musician “MJ”.

​The year was 1989.  I was a Sophomore in High School, 15 years old, attending “The Chicago Academy For The Arts”.  The Chicago Academy For The Arts is Chicago’s version of New York’s Fame.  An arts high school where all the students who attend, major in one of four things;  Visual Art, Dance, Theater or Music.  I went as a music major and it was a magical year for me that in many ways helped shape the person I would become.

In the mornings at the Academy we took our core required classes.  English, History, Math and so on.  Then, we would break for lunch.  It was an “open campus”, so we were allowed to leave the campus for an hour to eat where ever we wanted, which was extremely liberating to my 15 year old self.  Then, we would all return and spend the rest of the day taking classes in our chosen field of study.  I had guitar lessons, music theory classes, ear training classes and so on.  It was an incredibly inspiring and informative year. ​

When I was at the Academy, I became friends with someone who would become my first songwriting partner, and ultimately a life-long friend, Mike Malone, or as his friends refer to him, MJ.  MJ and I would spend countless weekends together making music, during the one year I attended the Chicago Academy For The Arts and for a couple years after.  We would hole ourselves up in MJ’s home studio for the weekend and stay up until the wee hours of the morning working on music together.  We wrote and collaborated on dozens of songs during this year.

These songwriting weekends were magical times.  Music was still relatively new to me at that point. I had only been playing guitar a few years and I was brand new to songwriting.  I was filled with a sense of wonder and awe about music that perhaps only someone who had recently discovered music can feel.  This was long before the days of worrying about how to make money from music and long before the days of trying to write specific styles that have the greatest chance of “commercial success” and so on.  These songwriting weekends were simply about making music for the sheer joy of making music.  Nothing else.  Sure, we would sometimes fantasize about how rich and famous we would one day become, but ultimately, we were just two friends getting together to share our passion for music in the purest way possible.

After my sophomore year in High School I chose to attend my local public High School where I was living in Kanakee, IL.  You see, I lived about 50 miles south of Chicago and as much as I loved attending the Chicago Academy for the Arts, I had grown tired of getting up at 5 am to get ready for the commute, getting home around 5 PM, or later, then proceeding to study and practice until bed time, go to bed and then get up and do it all over again.  As much as I loved the experience, it was also pretty grueling. That, and I didn’t have any friends in the town where I actually lived, since I wasn’t attending school there. My family and I had just relocated to Kankakee, from Florida where I lived previously. I wanted to get to know people locally and finish my high school years making friends in the town I lived in.

So, I made the difficult decision of deciding to switch schools and spent the next two years attending Kankakee High School.  Ultimately it was a good decision and I ended up forming a lot of great friendships over the next couple years in Kankakee. I also continued to study and play music locally.  But I missed going to the Academy and even would have dreams of being back there for the next year or so. It made that big of an impact on me.

MJ and I kept in touch and we kept collaborating as often as we could for the next couple years.  Then, after High School, I went to Boston to attend Berklee and we ended up drifting apart for a number of years.  Quite a few.  A good decade or so.  We would occasionally call to say hi and catch up, but we didn’t really start hanging out again regularly until around 2006 or so.  MJ had gotten married and had a child.  I had lived in a few different areas over the years and by the time I resettled in Chicago again, in 2000, after having spent time in Boston and southern Illinois, I think we were just in different places in our lives.

MJ and I have recently started writing and collaborating on music together for the first time in 30 years.  Of course, MJ, has performed on many of my songs over the last few years, including on “hits” (to me) like “Headed Home”, "Falling Down", “Where We Were” and “Nobody Knows Us”, all of which have been licensed repeatedly.  But this is the first time in three decades that we’ve been writing music together and we’re preparing to release an EP together in the Fall.  We’re both excited to be working on music together again, and as a result of our collaboration we’ve been spending a lot of time together lately, in the studio and just hanging out as friends.

​My collaboration with my friend MJ has really gotten me thinking about the many friendships and relationships I’ve formed over the years as a result of playing music.  In many ways, when I reflect back over the last couple decades, I feel like these friendships and connections with people have really been the greatest gift music has given me. 

Throughout both my adolescent and adult life, music has been the catalyst the has allowed me to form dozens of friendships and relationships with other musicians and people in the industry.  Some of the friendships have lasted for a brief period of time, while we were performing or working together, others have lasted many years, and others, like my friendship with MJ, have come in and out of my life at different points.
​ 
But music, consistently, has been the thing that gets me out of the house and motivates me to get out there and “make things happen”.  Whether it’s the desire to get a band together, the desire to go into the studio and record new music, or even something as simple as going to play at an open mic, music has consistently been the magnet that has attracted many of my closest friendships and relationships over the years.

As cliché as it sounds, life really is about the journey and not any particular destination. A big part of what makes a journey so enjoyable are the people we meet and connect with along the way. But the catch is, it’s hard to embark on a journey if you don’t have a specific destination in mind.  So, set your sights high, and go for your dreams.  Just don’t forget to enjoy and embrace the journey along the way.  Because, chances are, when you look back on your life, from a future vantage point, it will be the journey you took to get to your desired destination and the people you met along the way that you cherish the most.  Even the challenges and obstacles you overcome will be appreciated, if you overcome them with the right people.

I’m reminded of one of my favorite quotes, by Freud, which is:

“One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.”

Musically Yours,
​Aaron Davison

Speaking of the EP I’m working on with my friend MJ, here’s one of the tracks that will be featured on our upcoming EP.  We’re calling our project "Zen Folks".  Our music consists of spiritually themed lyrics with elements of folk, rock, new age music and more.

Listen to our first track, "Slip Away (North Light)" here.

Follow me on Spotify and hear our full EP when it's released.

Back in December of 2017 my girlfriend of about two and half years, and I broke up, rather abruptly and somewhat unexpectedly. I’ll never forget that day.  I went to a café a few blocks away from our apartment for a couple hours so she could move her things out of the apartment we were sharing together.  I sat in a state of shock alone, drinking a cappuccino, as waves of grief, confusion, sadness and a tiny bit of relief that months of arguing had come to an end, washed over me.

I got a message from my now ex saying she was sorry things didn’t work out and that all her things were out of my place and that it was “safe” to go back.  I went back to my place and opened the door to a now half empty apartment.  A row of empty clothes hangers lined half of the closet, where a few hours earlier my girlfriend’s clothes were.  All of her trinkets, photos and “girly” things that she spent months decorating our apartment with were now gone.  There was a palpable sense of loneliness in the air, in my now sparsely decorated apartment. 

As I sat on my un-made bed, my acoustic guitar laid next to me, out of its case.  I picked up my guitar and I played with a sense of intensity and purpose that I hadn’t felt in years.  I played guitar as if my sanity and emotional well being depended on it.  I played for about four to five hours straight.  The more I played the better I felt.  It felt as if I was “exhaling” my grief with each note I played.  The phrases and ideas I played that night felt imbued with a sense of meaning and power I hadn’t felt in a long time.  It’s hard to put into words exactly.  All I know is by the end of the night, I had a strange sense of peace about things.  I wasn’t over the breakup obviously, but I went to bed with a knowing that I would get through this experience and that, as they say, “this too shall pass”.

Over the next few months, I returned to playing music with a vengeance.  I regularly practiced guitar for several hours each day.  Something I hadn’t done in many years.  I played out every chance I could and developed a tangible sense of momentum, not just with songwriting, which I had never abandoned, but with my guitar playing and overall musicianship.  This sense of progress and forward movement really helped me get through the next few months.  It gave me something to focus on and channel my energy towards.  It kept me busy and occupied.  Whenever I had a free moment, or a feeling of boredom or loneliness, I would pick up my guitar and get lost in hours of improvisation and practice. 

The great thing about music, is that it will never leave you.  It’s there in the good times.  It’s there in the bad times.  No matter where you are in life, or what you’re going through, if you’ve been blessed with a passion and gift of playing music, it’s always there. 

About six months after my ex and I broke up, I met my now girlfriend, Shantal, who is hands down, without question, the most stunning and beautiful woman I’ve ever had the pleasure of spending my time with.  As my good friend Francisco always says, “Life has a funny way of working itself out”.

John Mayer is one of my favorite contemporary artists.  He’s both an amazing guitarist and songwriter.  He writes great, catchy pop songs and also has the ability play long, extended, improvised guitar solos with “The Dead & Company”.  He’s also really funny, witty and I’m going to say it, pretty damn handsome.  It’s true, I have a bit of a man crush on John Mayer.

Here’s John Mayer on a recent podcast explaining how whenever things are difficult in his life he always returns to his love of music.  He describes playing the guitar as “hammering out the dents” in his psyche. I love that description.

Whether it’s getting through a break up, making sense of the world around us, or simply celebrating the good times, music and our passion for music has the ability to help us transcend the ups and downs we go through in life.  Music has the power to both save our lives and help save the lives of others. 

Here’s a song I wrote during my months as a single man in early 2018, about my ex-girlfriend.  This one, as always, was produced by Gary Gray.  We just signed this one to a publishing/licensing deal a few days ago.

I just finished a new song called “Breath Divine”, which I’ll be sharing below.  It’s one of the more personal, introspective songs I’ve written in quite awhile.  It’s about, you could say, the search for divinity, the search for something pure, something beyond the day to day monotony of life.  Perhaps you could say it’s about the place “just beyond”.

I’m really excited about this song because I feel like I captured, or at least got a little closer to capturing, “that place” music has the potential to take you to.  I put “that place” in quotes because I can’t fully put into words what I’m trying to say.  I think that’s sort of the point of music, it allows you to express emotions and feelings that are beyond words and language.  Music, you could say, transcends language. 

It reminds me of a scene in the documentary about the band Phish called “Bittersweet Motel”.  A Phish fan was asked why he goes to see Phish and prefers to see them sober and responds, “There’s less restriction to “that place” you need to go to appreciate music”.  The interviewer asks, “What’s the place?”.   The Phish fan responds, “The place? It’s in your soul.  That place”.  

​Music takes you to "that place". As comical as this scene was to me when I first saw it, that about sums it up as well as I could.  Music takes you to “that place” in your soul.

I spend a lot of time writing about and doing courses and podcasts about things like licensing, music streaming and music marketing. I tend to focus on how to make money from the music we create.  I plan to continue doing this, because getting our music out into the world and marketing our music services a very practical, necessary purpose.  We need, as professional musicians, to learn ways to monetize and promote our music.  This is the practical and realistic side of being a musician.  We’ve got to pay those bills!

I have a real passion for sharing what I’ve learned about the music business and helping other musicians get their music out there and make money from their passion.  The world needs our music and if we as musicians don’t have the ability to earn a living from our craft, my fear is that fewer and fewer aspiring musicians are going to go into the music business in the first place, and fewer and fewer great songs are going to be shared with the world.

So, it’s an important mission to me, because in a sense, the future of music is at stake.  And you could, somewhat easily, argue that we’re already seeing the result of a music industry that has become harder and harder to make a living in.   Most people I know would agree, that at least the music that is making its way into the “mainstream” isn’t what it used to be.  It’s somewhat subjective and if I had the time I could easily write a very lengthy book on this topic alone. But let’s be honest, the mainstream music of today, compared to 20 or 30 years ago, it kind of sucks.  

And that leads me to the point of this blog.  Which is that even though figuring out how to make money from music is an important part of the conversation, there’s an even more important element to all of this, that I sometimes don’t talk about as much as I’d like.  I fear that there’s something that maybe gets a little lost in all of this talk about different ways to make money from music and the music business.

And that is, simply the music itself.

There’s a much more important side to music than just figuring out how to generate revenue from it.  There’s a magical side. A mystical side.  My guess if you’re drawn to making  music, you sense this.  You can feel it.  There’s a reason we’re all so drawn to something that is in many way, a much more difficult and uncertain career path. 

Music feeds the soul. 

And I think we’re living in a time where the world needs great artists and creative types, perhaps more than ever.  Let’s not forget that as we all continue forging our way “ahead” in the music business. Let’s not forget that our true mission as musicians is to touch people and move people in a way that only music has the ability to do.

And yes, people may seem a little less likely to be moved by music these days, but perhaps that’s only because they need it now more than ever.

Let’s not forget that there’s a “place” beyond making money and paying bills, beyond the man-made system of currency, credit and debt.  A place beyond the day to day grind.  Let’s not forget that music transcends all of these concerns.

Don’t forget the power and magic of music.  Don’t forget what it’s really about.

Check out my latest song, "Breath Divine", below.  

[As always, a huge shout out to my producer Gary Gray for helping me bring my music to life. A great producer (like Gary), is like an extension of whatever band or project you’re in and he’s a huge part of helping me see my musical vision through and bringing my songs into the world.]

Without further adieu, here’s my latest track, Breath Divine.

I recently had two new tracks of mine on The Young And The Restless.  These placements were particularly exciting because they were both tracks I sang lead vocals on.  I haven’t had a ton of tracks that I sing vocals on placed over the years.  I’ve had a lot more success with having other vocalists sing on my tracks and licensing instrumental music, so it was really exciting to see two new placements on my most recent ASCAP statement that both featured my lead vocals.

I’ve worked really hard over the last few years to improve my singing.  I would say it’s been the single biggest challenge I’ve faced as a songwriter/performer.  I started learning how to play guitar when I was twelve, but it wasn’t until I got into my twenties that I started, reluctantly, singing.  It took me a long time to feel comfortable as a vocalist.  

A lot of times I would end up singing on my recordings just because it was easier to sing my own tracks than to find someone else.  I was the lead singer in my first band in Chicago, URB, until we found our front man a few months later.  In my second band, Continuum, I shared lead vocal duties with our keyboard player.  Same thing in my third band.

So, over the years I’ve sang a lot.  But it’s always been something that I’ve sort of struggled with.  Singing never came naturally, like it seems to for some vocalists.  I’ve had to work really hard at it.

I’ve taken vocal lessons at different points over the years and those have been helpful.  There are definitely techniques, like learning how to breathe properly and doing different vocal exercises, that can greatly improve your vocals.  But like a lot of things, I feel like what’s helped the most, is just doing it, a lot.

Over the last couple years I’ve been singing every chance I get, both in the studio and in live situations.  I’ve been singing at gigs and also trying new songs at open mic nights.  Open mic nights are a great way to try new things and practice in a front of a crowd.  Over the last couple years I’ve been hitting open mic nights pretty regularly, to specifically practice singing in front of people.  It’s a great, no pressure way, to work on new material in front of a live crowd.  If you’re not great, it’s not like anyone paid to see you!  But of course, you should work on getting great so people will be willing to pay to see you?

I still have a lot of room to improve when it comes to my singing, but I’m making verifiable progress and for me half the fun of being a musician is the journey and the process.  It’s exciting to reach new heights and be able to look back and see how far you’ve come. 

All of this is to say, I placed two new vocal tracks.  I might not yet be a good enough singer for The Voice, but I’m good enough for The Young & The Restless, and for now at least, I’m happy with that!

I’m working on creating new podcasts, videos, etc…  I’m excited to see where our musical journey will take us in 2019!

In the meantime, check out the two tracks I placed recently.

This track, Headed Home, was used recently in one episode.

This track, Nobody Knows Us, was used in four episodes.

I often get asked to share more of my music with readers of my site and blog.

I just got my newest song, "Another Way" back from my producer, Gary Gray.

This is the first track from a new album in the works that marks a return to my roots of more guitar oriented, bluesy, "jammy", rock tracks.

I'm sharing this with you before I share it with anyone else. I wanted you to hear it first.

I'm really excited about this track and the entire project.

Check it out below and let us know what you think.

Another Way
I dreamt of you again last night
It’s been so long
time just moves on
And though I chose to walk away
I wish you knew
that I wish I stayed
But all the choices that we’ve made
Have all been made

And yesterday is gone
and tomorrow waits
and right here where I am
I know it’s not too late
to turn this page
and find another way

And in my dream it felt so real
It felt just like
It used to feel
And all my sorrow went away
when I realized
it was not too late
But then my dream it turned to grey
I lied awake

And yesterday is gone
and tomorrow waits
and right here where I am
I know it’s not too late
to turn this page
and find another way

​One of my favorite quotes about music, came from Sam Beam, aka Iron & Wine, he said, “When you treat it like a job, they pay you like it’s a job.”.   I always loved this quote because I think it really sums up the mindset you need to have to turn your passion for music into a full-time career.  If you simply dabble in music, whenever inspiration strikes, and take a half-hearted approach to your music career, chances are your income that you generate from your music is going to reflect that. 

If your goal is to make music a full-time job, that you can live from, you need to approach it as such.  This entails getting up every day with a strategy and a game plan that you execute on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.  I think where a lot of musicians get stuck, is not knowing exactly where to focus their energy and not know what the best plan of action is.  Making music is sort of the easy and obvious part.  But what do you do once the music is made?

As I’ve often said, music is different from other, more traditional professions, in that there isn’t always a clear and concise path to success.  This can be confusing and frustrating.  If you’re not sure what to do on a regular basis, that will help get you closer to your goal, how do you know where to best focus your energy?  How can you confidently work towards the realization of your goals?

Well, there isn’t one clear answer to this, but in the hundreds of interviews I’ve done over the last decade, and in my experience with all the musicians I’ve connected and collaborated with in a variety of different capacities, there are a few clear commonalities that most success stories share.

For the sake of this article, I’m going to assume you already have music that is amazing and ready to be shared with the world.  This is obviously a gigantic subject and one which is ultimately subjective.  Which makes it sort of hard to talk about in the context of a “how to” article.  How do you make “great” music?  How do you know if your music is “great” and ready to be shared with the world?  Well, I’ll leave that up to you as an artist to figure out.  I personally think you sort of just know.  When you write a great song, or complete an amazing composition, you can sense it.  If you’re not really sure whether or not you have great music, there’s a pretty good chance you don’t, yet.

Marketing And Connections
Success in the music business, apart from the music itself, comes down to marketing and connections.  That’s really it.  Look at the music business around you.  Look at the acts that have become enormously successful.  Start to ask yourself why certain band and artists are successful and you’re not.  Start to actually investigate the back stories of what led to successful artists becoming successful.  You can often times reverse engineer the relationships and connections that led to an artists’ success.

For example, did you know that Taylor Swift’s Dad was an early investor in Taylor Swift’s record label (until a few days ago), Big Machine Records? Swift’s Father reportedly invested around 120k in Big Machine to help launch the label and Taylor’s career.  Does that mean that he bought her career?  I don’t see it that way.  The public voted a resounding yes on Taylor Swift and I think it’s her music, drive and personality that ultimately cemented her success.  But did her Dads connections and money help get her started?  Absolutely and I think there’s a good chance you would have never heard of Taylor Swift had her parents not invested in her career early on.

For an artist to become successful in the mainstream, there needs to both be a “product” the mainstream public wants, and it needs to be marketed successfully.  Money and connections open certain doors, but the music itself obviously plays a huge role, that really can’t be denied.  Whether you like music that becomes popular or not, there is something about popular music that works and results in becoming successful.  For example, in the case of Taylor Swift, her Father’s support in launching her career no doubt helped, but it’s undeniable that Taylor Swift is immensely talented as a songwriter and performer and has an incredible work ethic.  Money and connections alone don’t create one of the world’s most successful artists.  If they did, there would be a lot more Taylor Swifts.

Apart from the actual music itself, the common denominator I see that separates the vast majority of successful artists from those who are not successful, all other things being equal, is how well their music and brand is being marketed.  If no one knows you, then you’ll never become “successful” in the public eye.  The public needs to know about your music, to know whether or not it likes it in the first place.  Part of your job, if you’re an indie artist, is to figure out how to better promote and market yourself to more and more people.

HOW??
Now I know what you’re thinking.  Ok, great, it makes sense and is sort of obvious, but how?  How do I get my music noticed and heard in a sea of unknown artists?  Well, that’s the 64 Million Dollar question we’re all trying to figure out.  If it was as simple as do X, Y and Z and then you’re a rock star, we’d all just do X, Y and Z and be rock stars already. 

It might not be simple or easy, but I do think a few conclusions can be drawn.  Here’s what I see working among all the success stories I know of, both in terms of mainstream success and success on a smaller scale, among indie artists who are able to make a living from their music.

These are the areas you should be focusing your time, every single day, if you want to make a full time living from music:

The Music – Again, it all starts with the music.  Regardless of what your thoughts on contemporary music, whether or not you like it, and whether or not you think the public has “good” taste in music, the music itself still plays a critical role.  Public tastes change and trends come and go, but the performance, emotion and feeling you put into your music matter as much as ever.  Focus on the music you make, first and foremost.  Write great songs and build up a body of work you can license, stream, perform, sell and so on.  Without great, marketable music, nothing else you do will really matter.  Whenever I’m not quite sure what to focus on, I focus on simply writing the most amazing music I’m capable of. 

Money/Connections/Networking – Money and connections help, as they always have.  Knowing the right people or connecting with the right person, can make a huge difference in your career. We might not all have rich fathers that are willing to invest six figures in the launch of our careers, but all of us can do things like attend industry events, network, shake hands, make phone calls and so forth, in order to connect with more people in the business.  Don’t come from a place of trying to use people or get something from them. This is almost always the wrong approach.  Instead aim to make connections with people that are genuine and authentic. 

Money, as in the case of Taylor Swift, can buy promotion and attention.  Money buys things like recording time, promotion, advertising and on and on.  Of course, if we all had an unlimited supply of money, we could simply buy our way onto the public’s radar.  But, do your best with the resources and money you have. 

Things like Facebook advertising, google ads, Youtube, Reddit and more, can all be great ways to promote your music on a small budget.  Of course, it will be harder with a smaller budget in many ways.  But the good news is that you won’t be able to simply waste money on a product that isn’t ready to be promoted.  Hone your music and your marketing skills and make every dollar count, winning over new fans, one at a time.  As your success in music grows, you can increase your marketing budget accordingly. Working on shoe string budget will force you to really focus on what works.  (Yes, my glass is half full.)

Outside The Box Thinking (Branding) – This is probably my favorite part of the conversation in terms of marketing and branding.  It’s what I call “outside the box” thinking.  This is my favorite part of the discussion, because it’s something we all have access to.  We don’t get to choose our parents or what kind of wealth and connections we’re born into, but we can all choose to look at the world in a more creative, “outside the box” sort of way.

For an artist or brand to become talked about in the press, there needs to be something extremely compelling to discuss.  Again, clearly the music you make needs to be great.  But, the problem is that there is so much music out there, that even if your music is amazing, it can be hard to break through the barrage of music that exists, if you’re not doing something unique and original and branding yourself properly.

Having an interesting and compelling story and brand, will make it easier for people to remember you and make it more likely that you’ll get featured in the press, on people’s blogs, playlists and so on.  Don’t just release your music and hope that’s enough. It won’t be. Tell people why you’re creating music.  Reach out to bloggers, playlist curators, press outlets and more and tell them what makes you different and unique.  Be creative not just in terms of the music you make, but how you present yourself and your music to the world.
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I find that often times adding fairly minor details in terms of what inspired you to write specific songs and release specific albums goes a long way in getting bloggers and play-listers to pay attention.  It doesn’t necessarily have to be a super elaborate back story. 

For example, I’m going to be releasing a new EP of all instrumental, ambient guitar music soon, and I’ve been contacting blogs and playlists to get some help in promoting my new release.  In the last few days alone my first single, Rays, was picked up by two new blogs and is going to be added to a pretty large playlist (several hundred thousand followers) next week!  I simply reached out to a few different places and told them about my new release and how I’m inspired and driven to create music that is positive and uplifting, in order to combat all the darkness and craziness in the world.  Which is entirely true, but I had never really taken the time to articulate that until recently. 

What’s your story?  Why is making music so important to you?  How can you better convey what inspires you and motivates you in your branding?  Improving your branding and marketing can actually be a really fun and insightful process. It forces you to really get in touch with what motivates you and drives you.

Check out the first single from my upcoming, instrumental, ambient guitar release, called “Rays”.

Follow me on Spotify.

It’s important that you have clear and consistent branding.  Think about the kind of images, artwork and story would best fit your music and the message you’re trying to convey with your music.  Good branding will help you stand out and make it easier for people to remember you and the music you create.  There’s a reason major corporations work with ad agencies to help promote their products; because it works.  Advertising and branding are a huge part of success in any industry, including of course the music industry.

So, what’s the ultimate takeaway?  Does success in the music business simply come down to luck and being in the right place at the right time?  I don’t think so.  It’s clear in hearing Christoffer’s story and the countless other success stories I’ve heard over the years, that success in the music business is usually the result of both hard work and often times, what seems and feels like luck.  Perhaps it’s better to say that success in the music business often arrives in unexpected ways, but if you re-trace the steps that led to most artists becoming successful, you’ll find that a lot of hard work was done along the way.

A few days ago I sent out an article I wrote, called “The #1 Problem With The Music Industry” to my email list.  In that article I articulated why I think the biggest problem with the music industry is that there are too many musicians, in the sense that the supply of musicians outweighs the demands of the marketplace. I see this as the biggest hurdle most musicians will face, when it comes to creating a career in the music industry.

This was a really well received article, I received quite a few positive responses via email and many people who were in agreement with my assessment of the music industry.  However, I also received a few replies from people who seemed pretty discouraged by some of the statistics I pointed out.  I even got one response from someone who had decided to basically quit the business because of the statistics I pointed out.

I would like to address those that were discouraged by that article in today’s post.

Knowledge Is Power
In order to make an informed decision about anything in life, we need to take in as much data as possible.  Of course, we’ll never be able to assess all the data related to any given situation.  There’s simply no way of knowing all the different variables that are at play in something like the music industry.  There are far too many people involved in the industry, and far too many factors at play to be able to dissect all the different moving parts that make up the music business.

It's sort of like sizing up a potential dating partner.  It’s impossible to know everything there is to know about another person.  So, instead, we get to know people the best we can, we meet their friends and family, we spend quality time with them, and in the end we make decisions about people using a combination of logic, intuition and heart.  If we’re lucky, we make good decisions and surround ourselves with quality people and with quality partners.  Sometimes we let our emotions over ride our logic and we ignore red flags that are warning us to move in a different direction.  Conversely, sometimes we let our logic and intellect convince us to not give people a chance that would actually be very good for us.  We don’t always get decisions right.  We live and learn.

But, the more information and data we have going into a situation, the easier it is to make a decision that is right for us.  There are a lot of marketers and bloggers that gloss over certain realities of the music business in order to sell books and programs.  It’s easier to sell a program about how to make money in the music business, when you convince people that it’s easy to make it in the music business. 

But, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, my primary goal with my website and resources isn’t to make money.  My primary goal is to educate and inform people about the realities of the music business, and in particular the music licensing business.  The good, the bad and the ugly.

I don’t think the competitive nature of the music industry or the fact that it’s a relatively hard industry to succeed in should be overlooked.  In fact, I think it should be embraced and fully understood.  You need to be able to look at this business, for what it really is, square in the eye, in order to make an informed decision about whether or not you want to enter into it. You’ll also have a much better chance of success if you fully understand the reality of the business and what you’re up against.

Perspective
With that said, you still need to have a healthy, big picture perspective of the music business.  For example, in my previous article I pointed out a study that indicated that 90% of artists are completely unknown.  Some of you took that to mean you only have a 10 % shot at any sort of success in the music industry.  But, of course, that’s not how statistics really work.  The study I pointed to simply reported that the vast majority of music artists out there are basically unknown.  But that doesn’t reflect your individual odds of succeeding in the music business.

Maybe 90 percent of the artists surveyed are completely slackers with no work ethic.  Maybe the vast majority are hobbyists who are also balancing families and careers.  Maybe half of all the artists surveyed don’t even aspire to be full time musicians.  The problem with statistics and data is that it’s impossible to tease apart all the different variables.  Can we really know hard the competition wants to succeed?  Can we really quantify how badly someone else wants to make it in the music business, compared to your own desire to make it as a musician? Maybe you are part of the 10 percent who have what it takes to succeed?  Or, maybe you’re part of the 1 percent that go on to become ultra-successful in the music business.  There’s really know way to know these things using statistics alone.

Defining Success
You also have to really look at the big picture, in terms of how being a musician factors into your overall life satisfaction.  In other words, how much happiness do you derive from spending your time playing and writing music?  Do you prioritize money and security over pursuing meaningful work?  Would you be happy earning slightly less than the typical American or European (or elsehwhere) worker if you were able to make your living doing something you love?

The average professional musician earns $39,899.00 per year in the USA.  That’s not a ton of money, relatively speaking.  But the average person in the USA only earns $44,564.00. For an even larger, big picture perspective, consider the fact that if you make over $32,400.00 you are in the top 1% of income earners in the entire world!  I realize that in certain areas of the USA, or other parts of the world, that would be very hard to live on, but I find it incredibly helpful to take a step back and look at just how much money, even a modest salary in the west is, relative to the rest of the world.  Part of being successful is having perspective and knowing just how good you have it, even if you haven’t “made it” on the level of someone like Justin Bieber or Ariana Grande.

Again, these statistics are averages, and you could earn much more or much less than these figures, in or out of the music industry.  But, success isn’t just about overall money earned, it’s also about other things, that are harder to quantify, like a sense of personal meaning and overall life satisfaction; things that are harder to measure, but are of vital importance to the quality of your life.

Summing Up
My goal is to provide the most accurate, up to date information about the music licensing business and the music business at large.  It’s easy to get cynical about the music business and it’s easy to get discouraged.  But in many ways, I don’t think succeeding in the music business is that much different than succeeding in other industries.  A small percentage of people make it to the very top of most industries.  How many multi-millionaire CEOs are there compared to minimum or low wage workers?  How many rich entrepreneurs are there compared to entrepreneurs that struggle to get by?  I’m not going to bore you with more statistics, you can look them up if you're interested, but I think you get the point.

Succeeding at a “rock star” level in the music business is hard, because it’s special.  It’s not something everyone gets to do or can do, and that is what makes the goal so appealing.  If it was easy, everyone would just decide to be a rock star, and then it wouldn’t really be that special. 

Being a musician isn’t for everyone.  In order to know whether it’s right for you, you need to deeply understand both the business and be very self-aware about how much talent you actually have.  Do you have something truly unique and special to share with the world?  Do you have a burning desire to share your talent?  If so, in my opinion, you owe it to yourself and the world to chase your dreams!

Because remember, even if you don’t “make it” in the way that maybe you dreamed about when you were a teenager, even if all you ever become is a musician who succeeds on an “average” level, you’re still doing pretty damn good by virtue of the fact that you’ll be making way more than 99% of the entire world, doing something you love.

Think about that.
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Here’s a video that sums up this article pretty well that I posted to my Youtube Channel recently.

On a positive note, here's a video I posted to my Youtube Channel a few years ago, that breaks down a straightforward way of making 60k a year as a musicians working 25 hours a week.

In my most recent webinar for How To License Your Music Premium, with composer Dario Forzato, one of the topics we discussed was the idea of luck vs hard work in the context of licensing.  One of the topics Dario focused on in our webinar is how having a consistent routine and schedule that facilitates creating a consistent output of music will lead to consistent results over time.  Of course, along the way, you might just get lucky here and there and stumble upon the right opportunity at the right time.  There is an element of luck in the careers of most successful musicians and artists.  But it’s the daily, weekly, monthly and yearly work you do, that over time will lead to the most consistent results and will greatly increase your “luck”.

My favorite expression about luck, that I’m sure most of you have heard, is that “luck is when preparation and opportunity meet”.  I’ll give you an example.  When I first got into licensing, I was lucky in the sense that my former songwriting teacher had gone on to form a successful publishing company and was in need of the exact kind of music I was making at the time.  It was lucky, you could say, that I even knew her in the first place and that she just happened to need the kind of music I was into at the time.  Of course, I had spent years writing and recording songs prior to our working together, which is where the work part of it comes in to play.  Had I not been diligently working on the craft of writing songs and recording music for several years prior to reconnecting and working with my former teacher I wouldn’t have been prepared for the opportunity that presented itself.

According to Dario, and I concur 100 percent, hard work and consistency is what separates those that are able to do licensing full time from those who just get lucky and land a placement here and there. I did a podcast with Composer Eddie Grey recently where he more or less said the exact same thing. 

If you make enough music and submit it to enough places, chances are you can get “lucky” and license a few random things.  But it’s the composers and songwriters who diligently set out to create an amazing catalog of music and build ongoing professional relationships they cultivate and nurture over time, that end up in the “lucky” position of creating music for a living.

I recently created a Youtube video talking about this topic and someone left a comment along the lines of “Here’s another video that doesn’t really reveal the “secret” of licensing and doesn’t really say anything”.   It was something like that.  I sometimes get the feeling that musicians imagine there is some sort of insider, top secret, confidential knowledge, that only musicians “in the know” are privy to, that if they only knew would instantly lead to success in the music business and in music licensing.  Maybe there is.  Maybe the Justin Biebers and Bruno Mars of the world know something myself, and the hundreds of musicians I’ve worked with over the years don’t know. 

What I aim to do with my website, podcast, webinars and so forth is share what’s worked for me over the years and also to find other successful musicians that have carved out successful careers in the music licensing business and find out what’s working for them.  I came up with the novel idea of simply asking people who do music for a living to tell me how they do it, and I share that information with the growing community of musicians who read my blogs and are members of my website.

We all have slightly different paths and we sometimes get “lucky” in different ways.  But what I know is true, across the board, of all the different people I’ve interviewed and worked with over the years who are successful in licensing, is that they’ve worked hard to get where they are.

If I discover some sort of “top secret” formula to success in licensing, believe me, I will gladly share it with you via my podcast, courses, webinars, etc.  But, in the meantime, keep putting in the work.  Hard work is the only thing that I know that works consistently and it's much more reliable than luck.

I've had a nice string of placements over the last several months. I've had songs placed in commercials, several tv shows and even a video game recently. I thought I'd share a few of my recent placements, so you can get a better idea of the kind of tracks I write and some of the places my music has been used recently. 

Here are some of the highlights in terms of placements I know about.  I've had a few other incidental uses of my tracks, but here are some of the more prominent placements I've had recently....  Note the diversity in terms of styles, vocals, instrumentals, etc.
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Joy To The World (Instrumental Rock Guitar Version​) - I recorded this version of Joy To The World a few years ago on spec for one of my publishers.  It took a few years, but last December this track was used several times in different ABC promos for the movies Mary Poppins, The Great Christmas Light Fight, The Middle and ABC World News Now.

"Where We Were" - I recorded this track in LA with producer Gary Gray back in 2015.  This was licensed for use a few weeks ago in a new VR video game called "Catch And Release".  This was my first video game placement!  I sing lead vocals on this one and my buddy MJ, sang the harmony vocal part. I never imagined, when I wrote this, that it would end up being used in a video game, no less a video game about fishing.  But, now that I think about it, it does have a sort of, spending a day on the lake with a friend, casting out the line, drinking a couple beers, sort of vibe.  This track is also featured on a corresponding soundtrack for the game, so in addition to an upfront licensing fee, I'll also be getting payments for the soundtrack going forward.

Closer To You Now - Here's another one that I sang lead vocals on.  This was recorded a few years back with a full band in Chicago. You can really hear my Phish/Jamband influence come through on this one.  I never imagined when I recorded this that it would end up on an episode of The Young & The Restless, but there it was on one of my recent ascap statements with a corresponding payment for a usage on The Y&R.  

How Many Times? - For this track I recruited a friend of a friend to sing the vocal part.  For certain songs, my voice simply doesn't work. I try to be as objective as possible about vocals and find the best vocalist for each track.  Sometimes that's me, but a lot of times I use outside vocalists who can better capture the vibe of what I'm looking for.  This track was also used on a recent episode of The Young & The Restless.  I've had a lot of music used on this show over the years.

Falling Down (You Went Away) - Here's yet one more track that has been used on The Young & The Restless recently.  I recorded this track with producer Gary Gray in 2015.  My friend MJ sang lead vocals on this one.  This one was has been used several times on The Y&R over the last two years, including a recent placement several months ago.

Up To You - This song holds the record for the single track of mine that's had the most placements.  I don't know the exact number, but hundreds of uses over the years. This song has been heard on Fox Sports, The US Open, Rangers Insiders and several other sports shows I'm drawing a blank on at the moment.  I just got my most recent Ascap statement, and sure enough, there it was again!

Retail Outlets - Blanket License Deal-Here's a few more of my songs that have been recently licensed into a blanket licensing deal for use in retail stores around the world.  I don't know the exact details in terms of stores/locations yet, but should be receiving payment for these later this year.  All of these tracks were produced by Gary Gray.  I sing lead vocals on all of these, with the exception of "I Will Fly" and "Shooting Stars", which features vocalist Travis Nilan.

Awakened

​Venus And The Moon At Night

​I Will Fly

​Shooting Stars

I'm Gone

Do you feel like your music career is on the right track?  Or, do you feel like your spinning your wheels, not really getting anywhere?  Are you sure your on the right track with your music career? Are you sure your pursuing the right goals for your particular set of talents? How can you be sure? 

I had the revelation many years ago, that as long as I feel like I’m moving forward and making progress towards my goals, I feel satisfied.   I’ve never been overly concerned with reaching a specific destination, as much as simply wanting to continually progress.  For me, it’s always been more about the journey than the destination.  Not that I don’t have specific goals, I do, but my over arching goal is to keep progressing and growing.

But how do you really know if you’re making progress in something like the music business?  Is it enough to just have a vague sense of moving forward, or should you have specific, concrete goals you can gauge your success by?  Is it about financial success?  Is it about artistic satisfaction?  Both?

Enjoy The Journey, But Know Where You’re Going
Ultimately, I think you need to have both specific goals and targets you’re shooting for, as well as a deep appreciation for the journey.  The mistake many musicians seem to make is setting goals that are too distant and too lofty and then getting disappointed when they don’t reach those goals quickly. 

If you’re obsessed with the idea of playing stadiums like U2 or The Rolling Stones, you’re probably not going to really enjoy playing small bars and clubs for many years, although it will be required in order to reach your ultimate goal of playing stadiums.  If you have no appreciation for sweating it out in smaller venues and paying your dues, you’ll likely get burned out and give up way before every reaching your goal.

If your goal is to make a full time living licensing music and that’s all you think about, it might be challenging to appreciate the years it takes to get there by improving your tracks, writing more songs, spending days and months networking and building relationships, and so on.  If you don’t truly enjoy the process, it will be much harder to push through the challenging times and ultimately reach your goals, whatever they are.

Redefining Success
I used to fall victim to this sort of thinking in the past and it derailed me for several years.  I felt frustrated because I wasn’t moving forward fast enough and wasn’t reaching my, admittedly, very big goals.  It wasn’t until I redefined my own definition of success and changed my approach to making music and the music business, that I started to actually make progress and began to appreciate the journey.

Now, I know what you might be thinking.  Because I’m thinking it even as I type this.  Isn’t this just some sort of a trick to get your mind to accept settling for less?  And the answer is a definitive no.  I don’t want you to settle for less.  I want you to push as hard as possible and give everything you have towards reaching your goals.  In fact, you might even need to set bigger goals for yourself, to give yourself the proper motivation to truly grow and move forward.  BUT, you also need to be truly in touch with yourself and with where you are in the grand scheme of your career and life, in order to set the right goals. You need to learn to enjoy the daily, weekly and monthly process of grinding it out and moving forward.  And most importantly, you need to be sure you’re pursuing the right goals, the ones that are a best match for your particular set of skills, your personality and your desired lifestyle.

Part of success, in any industry, is being realistic about where you actually are and the things you need to work on to improve, on a daily basis in order to reach your goals.  If your dream is to perform in stadiums in front of 50,000 people, but you can barely muster up the courage to perform for 40 people at your local bar, you clearly have some work cut out for you.  If you don’t look forward to the incremental steps you need to take to inch your way towards your bigger goals, it’s going to be hard to move forward at all. Even if you get extremely lucky and somehow manage to skip the necessary steps you need to take in order to achieve success, there’s a good chance you won’t be ready for it when you get there, if you’re not prepared.

Self-Awareness
You also need to be realistic about how much you actually enjoy the work required to reach your particular goals, whatever they are. If your goal is to become a famous touring musician, but you don’t actually like being on the road and being away from your home for extended periods of time, you might need to reassess your goals. If your goal is to perform for thousands of people, but you don’t really enjoy performing or feel comfortable in front of large crowds, you might need to reassess you goals.  If your goal is to license music full time for television, but you don’t actually enjoy the kind of music that’s used in TV, you might need to reassess your goals.  If you want to be a famous songwriter, but you’re not comfortable with periods of struggle and uncertainty, you might need to reassess your goals.

Even though we live in a time where there are, perhaps more musicians than ever before, making a career out of music is still a fairly unconventional and risky career path.  Although there are plenty of examples of people who have figured out how to turn their passion for music into a viable career, doing music for a living requires and enormous amount of both self-discipline and self-awareness. 

You might have a dream of becoming a famous touring musician, but do you really, truly want that deep down?  Is your passion and love for music strong enough to overcome the enormous obstacles and challenges that will inevitably present themselves on your journey?  Only you really know the answers to those questions.  Only you know if you really have what it takes to make it in the music business.  Only you know what part of the music business your particular temperament and interests are a good fit for. 

If you’re not sure what you really want and what you’re a really good fit for, perhaps some soul searching is in order.  It took me many years to really figure out where I fit best in the music business and to learn how to turn my passion for music into a viable career. I’m still tweaking and modifying my particular formula for working in the music business, to this day.

Changing Goals
Also, keep in mind your goals and interests may very likely change as you move forward and grow as both a person and musician.  When I was younger, I was dead set on forming a band and becoming a famous rock guitarist in the vein of Carlos Santana, Trey Anastasio, Jerry Garcia, etc.  So after I finished Berklee I formed a band in Chicago that lasted several years and played a lot regionally.  After this first band broke up, I formed another band and continued to perform.  This band lasted about two years. After that band broke up, I formed yet another band, that lasted about a year and a half.  After that band broke up, I formed yet one more short-lived band, that only lasted about six months.

After a decade of playing in different bands, none of which became “rock star” level successful, I was forced to reassess my path and goals.  I loved my time playing in bands, but as I got older, there were things about this lifestyle and path that started to feel incongruent to me.  For example, when I was younger, I used to get pretty bad stage fright and my solution at the time was to simply drink alcohol until I felt comfortable enough to perform.  After all I thought, I’m working in an environment where drinking is not only permitted, it’s given to me for free!  Drinking alcohol is a really effective short term solution to stage fright.  It works in the moment to relieve nerves, but like many “quick fixes”, it comes at a price.  Negative health consequences, hangovers and social costs, are all part of the fun of using alcohol excessively.

So, after a decade of performing live I decided to step away from playing in bands for awhile.  In retrospect, it was a much needed break, because it allowed me to really focus on myself and get healthy.  I took a trip to Costa Rica and Nicaragua during this period, where I ended up actually performing a lot, particularly in Nicaragua, where I befriended a fellow musician and bar owner.  Except this time, I was performing mainly for fun, so I didn’t really feel the pressure I felt before when I was trying to “make it”.