I don't show them to my friends, because the lyrics are kinda personal ... I'd nevertheless like to find a way to give my songs a little wider audience.

With that in mind ... anyone have any ideas on how to do that? I've been scouring the Web for promotion websites, etc. ... I haven't yet found anything that isn't either a scam, exhorbitantly priced, or both. It doesn't help that I think I'm a better songwriter than a performer, but perhaps that's another matter. I guess I just want to get my songs heard a little more - any clues on how? Any thoughts at all would be immensely appreciated ... if it's at all relevant, I'm from the United Kingdom.

It's kinda discouraging, that's all, to keep writing and writing, and (apart from this amazing forum, of course), to essentially have just myself who knows the songs, so ... thanks for any and all comments!!!

That, my friend, is the question to which we'd all love to have the answer.

The only thing that I can come up with would be to post your songs on as many sites as you can. Sites like soundcloud, soundclick, youtube, etc.

Good luck.

I read you're from the UK and it made me think of Mary Spender. She's a songwriter and performer that has been able to create an audience, I know of her from youtube. She talks often about her journey which should be relevant to your question.

Jacob Collier, who's from some other planet in that he has otherworld talent, he did it with youtube also.

Both of them have did on there own, i.e. no record company help.

Here's a clever way Mary got 650k views (and she now has 685k subscribers):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0iXupQUjWU

Thanks, everybody. The reason I asked is: I'd usually show this kind of things to friends, etc., and pick it up from there. I CAN'T show these to friends, because (like I said) some of the lyrics are too "close to the bone", haha. So I was wondering if there WAS a way to find listeners, whilst bypassing the obvious routes of "friends and family". Frank, I will definitely have a look at what you suggested, tomorrow, therefore. Thanks so much!

Is your goal to get heard for feedback, or are the songs finished products you want to reach a wider audience?

For feedback, and also just getting music out there, Reddit has some good subreddits for that:

r/Songwriting
r/Songwriters

For finding an audience, putting your music up on Spotify, getting on playlists, engaging with people on Instagram, playing live shows and creating an email list, are some good starting points.

These are all FREE

Reverbnation.com
Soundcloud.com
Soundclick.com
Singsnap.com

Looking forward to hearing your songs.


Kajun Jeaux
Louisiana's BlackWater Studio

Thanks, QuestionAsker. In answer to your question: both! I need feedback, of course. As for the finished product: no, because my voice is not good enough - but I'd love some artist to hear them and want to record a song or even two of mine, themselves. That's the dream, at least, no? Thanks for your kind answer!

Kajun Jeaux: I didn't know about SingSnap. I'll check it out now. Thank you!

Getting songs out to artists is a challenge. Music business contacts - people actually active in the industry - are essential. Contacting artists’ lawyers is another way but most are unlikely to accept unsolicited submissions.

The OP (or any songwriter in the UK) could join The Ivors which holds events useful to writers: https://ivorsacademy.com/membership/

A way to get songs heard is via songwriting contests. Vocals need to be good enough to put a song over, but for those who feel their vocals aren’t up to it they could use a software voice such as Synthesizer V. There’s a whole thread on Synthesizer V at VI-Control: https://bit.ly/3JoLleT

Or pay someone on Fiverr to sing for them. https://bit.ly/3L6Ssd1

Here are some song contests worth considering, they’re generally international: https://bit.ly/3T26Q8f

1. Google AdWords
2. YouTube Ads
3. Facebook Ads
4. Pornhub Ads
5. Twitter Ads
6. Reddit Ads
7. TikTok Ads

If you have limited budget, consider option 4 and 6, which are cheaper to reach more audiences/listeners.

No pain, no gain. Or should I say: no pay, no gain.

I'm not a pro, so take this with an appropriately large grain of salt. But...

Before you invest a lot of time and effort into this, it might be good to have reasonable expectations of success.

If your hope is truly that you'd like a song or two of yours to be recorded by an artist, I think there are two questions that need to be answered.

First, is your music commercial? Does it have broad appeal in a way that a large number of people will want to buy the song?

Music is a commercial venture, and the bottom line is that an artist will only pick a song if they feel it will be commercially successful. It costs money to make music, and people spend that money in the hopes that music sells and makes them a profit.

It's one thing to be writing deeply personal songs. It's quite another to write a song that will commercially successful. You'll be competing against people who have spent years honing their craft and studying the market.

Second, is posting your song publicly likely to get your song heard by an artist?

From what I've read, that might have worked once, but it's generally how things work now.

On top of that, there are many people competing in that space. So even if there were an artist looking for a song, how would they find you in the glut of other songwriters? The demos that you post are going to have to convince someone of the commercial potential of the song.

That's why people who are serious about trying to crack the commercial market will hire a professional singer on their demos. If the demo isn't top-notch, who's going to listen to it?

And I'm not saying to spend more money on the creating a demo - unless you're sure it's got commercial potential, and you've got an effective way to market that demo. I just don't see this route as likely to get you where you want to be.

Feel free to disagree, but I'd give a bit more thought about any likelihood of success before going down this path.

I plan on doing this as well in the future. I took a class with songwritingacademy.co.uk, they have bootcamps for this sort of thing. If they still do it, the 555 bootcamp ($5) is great, and their next level week bootcamp is also very good.

The things they stressed most is to have a good, clean, demo (melodyne might help your voice get to the level you need), and:

Once you have a good demo, determine what artist it would fit (or write for that specific artist. Or if writing for sync - the TV series or type of movie you want your song to be in. A good book I've seen for this is "Hey that's my song" by Tracey Marino which was recently released.)

When you know what artist would be a good fit for cutting the song, you can contact their manager or someone on their team, and send them the demo. Though note, they usually give you one chance, if it's not good, all future submissions will not be listened to, so you gotta make sure it's good and usually not longer than 3 minutes. That songwriting course will give much more in-depth information, but that's what I remember off the top of my head.

This is wishful thinking. Your odds of getting anyone in the business to listen to an unsolicited song are pretty close to zero!

What are you trying to accomplish? Just to get your songs a "wider" audience or earn living from it?

Big difference

The only people I know/knew who actually made money, from music enough to support themselves, were performing musicians. And there are only two main "kinds" that I know of:
Either be very (very!) good and versatile player that can play anything from classical, folk, pop, live. Solo or with different bands/orchestras at concerts.
Or a popular cover band musician (got to be a good performer) that can travel far distances to various minor clubs, small festivals, weddings etc. Whoever pays.
------------------------------------------

But if you are just looking for "wider" audience with modest expectancy, to just get your stuff to more "ears", I believe that's very doable. I would try this:
If you have, lets say 100 tunes, pick the best 5. Polish them. Upload to several major sites: Youtube, Soundcloud and a few others. Hide your other tracks, as people don't have time to "dig" in. Use keyword tags that describe genre, style etc. And throw some money for advertising (~$50/50euro a month). No guarantees, but likely you will pick up some new listeners / new feedback... if that is what you are up to.


P.S. Just remembered. I do know a some people who make living from music in a slightly different manner.
Teaching/instruction and music for advertisement, but that is probably not what you are trying to achieve.

I know people who have done it.

If you have a good product you have a shot.

I forgot to mention it is worthwhile to try to foster a relationship first somehow, even if it's just messaging them online that you like their work, doing something for them, etc.

I found a promoter who almost fell off the floor
He said "I never engaged in this kind of thing before"
"But yes, I think it can be very easily done"

Thanks everybody! It's really helpful, for me, to read your kind suggestions.

Just wanted to clarify that I'm not looking to make a living out of it. What I would dearly love is for a couple of my songs, at least, to be properly recorded (i.e. by an artist with a better voice than mine) ... and then, of course, if there are ways of getting them to a wider audience (i.e. not just personal friends and family), that would of course be great. But no more than this.

David Cuny: you make a point about a song having to be commercial to succeed. To an extent, I take your point; but there has, in my view, to be a balance. That is to say: yes, a song can't be so personal that it's unsellable; but I'm not interested in writing the latest pop craze, either, with no personal meaning attached. I do believe that audiences love "deeper" songs, too - despite what those who feed us cultural garbage would like us to think. So yes, I see your point, and it's good to write things that people can relate to (and will therefore buy); but I'm not going to go any further than that, in my writing, even if it means it goes nowhere :-) Just to clarify, that's all - but thank you for your kind and genuine thoughts on this, it's good to know where I stand on things, vis-a-vis the recording industry!

Everyone: I've been off, taking care of a sick relative, for a while. So many of you have given me amazing advice - I will try to reply to, and thank, each one of you in due course. For now, know I read it all and appreciate every word - thank you.

Well explained Musician17

For anyone wishing to hear Musician17’s songs/performances, there is a link to his website at the end of each of his posts. The site features 20 of his compositions.

Musician17...

There are two very reasonable ways / affordable ways to record good vocalist.

Hire one from fivvr. I have heard several tunes in Showcase where creators hired vocalists from fivvr and most sounded very professional.


A few people on the forum use vocal synths, which became very powerful these days. Surprisingly, you can get very, very close to original idea. Extremely realistic. Both male and female robo singers. So... Some leave it as robo tune, some use it as a guide for real singer.

P.S. I used fivvr couple of times myself for specific types of instruments not found in BIAB, and people I met there were nice and fair. Turnaround took 5 days on average.

Joining & participating in forums like this one helps a little. There's a FaceBook page called Reinventing the Wheel - the Music Barn...
https://www.facebook.com/groups/483326849098435/
that is similar to the Showcase but requires one to listen & comment to three songs per one's own song posts. There are squillions of other songwriter forums each is, essentially, the same in that you listen & comment then others do likewise.
Many folk post songs on Spotify etc via mobs like Distrokid. I've not come across one that seems reasonable to me but, then again, I don't use paid streaming platforms.
YouTube is a great place to post songs because you can have a decent audio quality with a place holder, lyric or specially made video. It's a platform that is very popular. I get more listens through that looking glass than on the three listen/respond forums I am a member of combined. Though that's most often "through traffic" from me posting a link on FaceBook.
As Misha says: Fivvr is quite popular and quite good, by all accounts I've heard, and the synth voices are incredible these days.
As you know, I struggle to sing and am, slowly, learning to use tuning effectively & less obtrusively...no quick fix down that road.

We have zero commercial aspirations but do enjoy the affirmation that folks other than family and friends like our music. Toward this end we started a few month back submitting a few of our tunes to Spotify playlists that seemed to match our genre and style … and that had a lot of followers. Surprisingly after three months of diddling around with this we are now getting over a 1000 plays a month. Tiny compared to many independent artists who get hundreds of thousands but still gratifying. And each day we find ourselves on additional playlists by folks who heard us on the lists we submitted to. Of course the key is to get on a list curated by Spotify itself. But you have to get 5k plays a month for consideration. Regardless it’s fun.

And one of the more popular playlisters recently featured Janice on his website: https://www.donstunes.com/janice-merritt/

All saying this is one of many ways to achieve a bit more exposure. We’d spend more time at it perhaps but the bulk of our time is spent hiking and biking.

Just previewed Janice Merritt's songs. The vocal pitch on-tune, vocal loudness, vocal EQ clarity, vocal sidechain effect, are for sure on the commercial level.

Can I ask what plugins were used in the vocal processing chain?

You'll find that Janice's pitch is "on tune" because she sings "in" tune.
A wonderful set of pipes wonderfully employed.
Bud is the engineer and keeps things clean & simple on the way in as well as in the box.
If you check thier posts in the User Showcase you'll be able to read the vocal & other chains used as Bud n Janice are generous with their information and don't hide any secret sauce - none being required when the true sauce is at the source.

Firstly thank you Ray for those remarks. Nice to read that over morning coffee
MusicVillian, the vocal chain is very simple. We’ve used Izotope’s Nectar for decades and rarely anything else. And all we trigger from Nectar is slight EQ (presence bump at 5K), very light compression and light reverb. Almost all her tracks are one take and we’ve never used any pitch editing over 37 years of recording. I’ve no issues with pitch editors but I do not ascribe to the popular notion that it is needed by everybody regardless of how good a singer they are. OK, enough and here’s hoping my wife does not read this as she is stunningly modest!

Bud

Speaking of Janice Merritt's voice, this is what I thought.

I could be partially wrong, or totally wrong, it's just my best guess.

Use this song "Emerald" as an example, produced by Scott Collingwood & Ray Cochrane.

#1. Janice's formant is great out of the box, no need to make her voice "wet". I assume little to none reverb was used, so her singing feels "in the face", not "from a distance", is the goal?

#2. Janice's vocal is penetrating the backing music with high clarity. I assume Nectar Unmasking was used, so her vocal signal is sent to an iZoptope relay, carving the similar EQ frequency out of the backing music?

#3. The whole song is peaking at 0db or -1db and has a perfect loudness. I assume Ozone was used to get to that desired LUFS?

#4. Janice's breath was at a good volume level, not intruding, not completely gone. I assume RX was used to attenuate her breath?

#5. Janice's essing and plosives were controlled very well. I assume some sort of waveform editings were done to her vocal, such as a RX de-essing?

#6. There are some good vocal harmony in the song. I assume it's Janice's lead vocal used in BiaB Harmoniest, or similar software, to pitch shift to third, or fourth, generate a harmony with perfect timing?

Bottomline: 37 years of engineering is no joke. The difference can be heard almost instantly.

MusicVillain said: Speaking of Janice Merritt's voice, this is what I thought.

I could be partially wrong, or totally wrong, it's just my best guess.

Use this song "Emerald" as an example, produced by Scott Collingwood & Ray Cochrane.

#1. Janice's formant is great out of the box, no need to make her voice "wet". I assume little to none reverb was used, so her singing feels "in the face", not "from a distance", is the goal?

As mentioned little reverb is used. Nectar's EMT 140 Plate Reverb sim is the source -- 12% Wet. Our goal is always to have the vocal forward given the genres we work in and our many years of playing and recording bluegrass before moving on to Americana and Blues.

#2. Janice's vocal is penetrating the backing music with high clarity. I assume Nectar Unmasking was used, so her vocal signal is sent to an iZoptope relay, carving the similar EQ frequency out of the backing music?

No unmasking was used. There is nothing on the vocal but minimal EQ, light compression and reverb from Nectar. Janice is a contralto and has some natural resonance to her voice.

#3. The whole song is peaking at 0db or -1db and has a perfect loudness. I assume Ozone was used to get to that desired LUFS?

Ozone's maximizer and Logic Pro's Loudness Meter were used for that. 12-14 LUFS as I recall.

#4. Janice's breath was at a good volume level, not intruding, not completely gone. I assume RX was used to attenuate her breath?

On tunes where longer phrasing requires a lot of intakes I use Nectar's Breath Controller (the old version).


#5. Janice's essing and plosives were controlled very well. I assume some sort of waveform editings were done to her vocal, such as a RX de-essing?

No waveform editing (never done that on her vocals) and no de-essing. Our studio is nothing but a Mac computer, Kali Monitors, Rodes NT1 mic, pop filter and a Scarlett interface which other than the filter I also use on my upright bass. This all replaced a LOT of analogue equipment 11 years ago. Janice sings facing a file cabinet with a quilted table runner hanging down on it. Janice says years of gigging led to her think about plosives and moving her mouth relative to mic placement to avoid them. No room mods, etc. Four windows looking out at a forest.

#6. There are some good vocal harmony in the song. I assume it's Janice's lead vocal used in BiaB Harmoniest, or similar software, to pitch shift to third, or fourth, generate a harmony with perfect timing?

We do zero pitch shifting. Those are her harmonies as sung by her to her lead. What ever one may think of bluegrass a hallmark of it is what we call car horn harmony ... exact phrasing and harmony on every syllable. So her harmony work comes from that school.

Bottomline: 37 years of engineering is no joke. The difference can be heard almost instantly.

Thank you from the two of us. And while I did the vocal engineering and mastering Emerald's mix was a collaborative effort.

Bud

How cool. Congrats on getting playlisted. A few months ago I started with a small FB ad at $5.00 a day targeting Disco, New Soul, and Club music. (Sorry, I just can't produce this stuff well with BIAB software). It has gotten me to the level where I have almost 7,000 monthly listeners and the bonus is that I've had listeners digging into my catalogue and finding songs I created back in 2019. Right now I'm getting around 700 streams across my portfolio per day. I'm like you all. I just do this for fun and also to see how far it will go. If I was really serious I would go out and play live and I ain't doing that. That ship has sailed. Paying 5 dollars is such a minor fee to "publicize my stuff. A lot of guys leave promotion out of the equation. I know that no matter what business you have whether it's music or making soap you have to promote it !! :-) I also have a couple of songs sitting with a record company under consideration to be covered. This is a good note for those that want to submit music. In most cases you "MUST GET PERMISSION" to submit. If not your song will go directly in the trashcan. Another lesson for today is that musicians are a lot smarter and know that the money is in publishing. The Record Company owner told me that a lot of the musicians today want their own songs on their album so getting a song covered is a tuff sell even if it's a good song. Now if both of us can get on that "curated" playlist. I'm on the curated "Radio" playlist and that's giving me about 500 streams a month but still along way to go. Anyway to answer the core question in my opinion to get a wider audience you have to post to sites that have a global presence. If money is the issue I would recommend Soundcloud and YouTube. But to get someone to listen the song really need to be fully produced for it to have a chance. - Henry

Thank you, Ray. It is so, so kind of you to stop by and try to help me out, here. I have checked out the forum you suggested, and will check out others. Hopefully, one of these days I'll even get the inspiration to write again :-) All best wishes from me!

For anyone wishing to hear Musician17’s testmyspeed omegle PS4 Controller songs/performances, there is a link to his website at the end of each of his posts. The site features 20 of his compositions.

Janice & Ian
1000 plays per month - well done! Congratulations!

I am happy if I get 100 plays - though at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter much to me, as I would create my music only for me to enjoy.

If you use Distro Kid they have a function for Ultimate Subscriptions, where you will get connected to quite a number of playlists, but whether it'll bring you a broader reach - I don't know.