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Caaron... Interesting that you resurrected this thread almost exactly a year after it ended!
In the past year a lot of these ideas have remained in my subconscious, and I've thought about them. Here are a few related but new thoughts to add to the mix:
Nashville song writers write songs they hope will be picked up by performers who are currently hot. There is a limited number of hot groups and an almost unlimited number of song writers competing for their attention... and therein lies the statistical improbability of winning the Nashville lottery.
But if you look at the astronomical number of live bands... most of which play covers because they know how to play instruments but they don't know how to write songs... it seems to me that if someone found a way to offer their songs in this arena, the likelihood of sales would increase dramatically.
In the past, the "industry" had the only system in place for marketing and distributing songs... but now the internet has made it possible for any band to promote themselves globally... and many are doing exactly that.
If somebody got good at placing songs with talented unknowns who were diligent about making a name for themselves, it could be good for everybody. The bands would get better songs than they would write themselves, and the writers would get access to a much larger marketplace.
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ps...
small time bands don't have money to pay up front for much of anything, so "sales" would have to be some kind of contingency arrangement... a percentage of sales, a mention in the credits etc.
Placing one song that got noticed would open doors... whether you got paid for it or not.
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Great observations Pat! Going into a situation like that you may want to define a few things though. 1st-What is the ambition of the band? There are some bands who's goal is to play popular covers...forever. There is nothing wrong with this, of course. There is a band near me that pulls in much more than some of the older national bands that open up for THEM! They even put out a CD called "Other People's Stuff Live!" If the ambition of the band is to make it, but they really are not good enough to...you may have a chance there. The problem being is it a dead end road? In addition to that, many times they feel they can just write songs themselves...and it sounds local. I've found for these types of bands is, they are local because of the way they think. They have bought into the "smoke an mirrors" over how the industry works. If they have ambitions of making it AND "get it" you probably have a pretty decent shot if YOUR songs are worth it  Another route to consider is find someone on youtube who is covering a song in the genre you like AND doing it REALLY well. Approach them with some original material along those lines. The nice part about it it is, you can gauge a bit of their success off of the number of views on the videos on their channel. You can even watch several artists for a few months to see if their views are growing or staying the same. It's a new world!
Last edited by HearToLearn; 06/05/15 05:44 AM.
Chad (Hope that makes it easier)
TEMPO TANTRUM: What a lead singer has when they can't stay in time.
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I thought I would at least give an example... Here is a guy I have worked with. Great guy, great vocalist. A quick example of a demo tracking session. Rough Demo Tracking If you notice, it has an astounding 2500 views! That's, two thousand five hundred. I could tell though, this guy and his bandmate had what it takes. I see this often enough...not that I can predict it by any means though! LOL I'm just saying that had something. Here is a song they released around that same time... 19 You + Me The lyric video got 4.8 MILLION views! Then they released an "actual video" which got an additional 3.6 MILLION views! It sold 720,000 copies. It charted to #7 on the billboard charts. Shay also ended up with two co-writing opportunities with Rascal Flatts as a result. Not to mention some of the people he got to co-write with. I see the inner workings of the industry every day. If you want to find a reason it can't be done, there are plenty. If you want to finds ways TO, as you are probably seeing, you can!
Last edited by HearToLearn; 06/05/15 05:47 AM.
Chad (Hope that makes it easier)
TEMPO TANTRUM: What a lead singer has when they can't stay in time.
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An emerging phenomenon that could make my previous suggestion even more workable is the way ASCAP and BMI are approaching small venues and in some cases shutting them down with back payments for licensing.
This is causing some venues to stop having live music... but others simply require bands to play original non-ASCAP/BMI music.
Behavior tends to follow an incentive, and if somebody creates an incentive for live bands to play original music, they will. Then more will, when they see that the only bands getting gigs are playing originals.
If this happens (and its already happening around here) it could create a whole new market for song writers, as established bands rush to compile a song list of enough originals to play a 3-4 hour set. It would be tough for the average band to write 40 GOOD songs in short order. But if some outlet existed where song writers hooked up with working class performers, they could pick 40 songs from a library and a decent band could learn them in fairly short order.
Seems to me there's an opportunity here for somebody who's a lot better than I am at writing songs.
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An emerging phenomenon that could make my previous suggestion even more workable is the way ASCAP and BMI are approaching small venues and in some cases shutting them down with back payments for licensing.
This is causing some venues to stop having live music... but others simply require bands to play original non-ASCAP/BMI music.
Behavior tends to follow an incentive, and if somebody creates an incentive for live bands to play original music, they will. Then more will, when they see that the only bands getting gigs are playing originals.
If this happens (and its already happening around here) it could create a whole new market for song writers, as established bands rush to compile a song list of enough originals to play a 3-4 hour set. It would be tough for the average band to write 40 GOOD songs in short order. But if some outlet existed where song writers hooked up with working class performers, they could pick 40 songs from a library and a decent band could learn them in fairly short order.
Seems to me there's an opportunity here for somebody who's a lot better than I am at writing songs.
Again, great points. The cool thing about that could be there are cover bands of ALL different genres. That means there could be a need for a lot of writing in genres that have previously not had much writing going on in. As an example, a 50's-60's beach type band that can't play The Beach Boys or that era of bands, may need a bunch of music sounding similar. That could be a lot of fun!
Chad (Hope that makes it easier)
TEMPO TANTRUM: What a lead singer has when they can't stay in time.
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