Originally Posted By: JimFogle


If I was seeking commercial success as a songwriter, I would concentrate on writing "seasonal" or "Christmas" songs. There is an annual need for fresh material, if a particular artist's version becomes a standard your heirs will be collecting royalities for generations, songs can more easily adapt to various genre performaces and, most important of all, you don't have to try to match current trends.


For a Christmas song.... write it around Christmas.....demo it in the late winter when it's done..... because the artists are in the recording studio starting in July to choose the songs and start the recording process and shoot the video to have the song ready for release in the stores and to radio & TV by October....or November.

And.... there are thousands of songwriters who know that and are plugging their new and older unreleased holiday music.

NSAI had over 120 songs by members in one year that were deemed good enough to pitch to publishers, and that doesn't even begin to count the thousands of songs that were not written well enough, or recorded well enough to make it over that high bar for "demo" songs in N-town these days......and they were ALL christmas music. And that was just one year. From one outlet. There aren't that many slots available and many artists are writing and co-writing their own stuff.....Swift, Paisley, Band Perry.... so that reduces the slots to maybe one or two outside writers per project..... man it's just downright depressing to even think about it.

BTW: My song The Best Christmas, was one of those 120 songs that did make it over the bar..... but, in the end, only 12 of those 120 were chosen for a CD that went to publishers for the annual Christmas offerings from NSAI....and my song did not make that cut.

Last edited by Guitarhacker; 05/11/14 04:50 PM.
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