Put Your Best Song Forward

With the advent of the Internet and the development of digital audio files, music distribution has been democratised – any artist can make their music available globally with the click of a button. However, attention is still a key component…

The Cream Always Rises

Particularly if you’re just starting out writing songs, it can be difficult to let things go – but editing songs is an essential skill, to ensure the track’s pacing retains the listeners’ interest. Similarly, if you have a lot of songs recorded, it can be tempting to pile as many as possible onto a CD (or music sharing service) and send them out to A&R, DJs or other industry reps – the thinking being, “well, if they don’t like this song, maybe they’ll like one of the other ones – after all, they are very different.”

However, things don’t work this way in reality – people you send your music to don’t have as much invested in your songs as you do, and you will be lucky if they even listen to one track all the way through. The classic quote regarding the difference between amateur and professional photographers is worth bearing in mind here, to wit: “The amateur shows you all their photographs”.

So rather than trying to get people to listen to all your songs, choose your best song and use that for your promotional pitches. Even at that, when considering the song itself, you need to hook the listener within the first ten seconds. Easier said than done, of course, but with a practically infinite supply of new music now available online, artists need to have a sense of perspective on the industry landscape.

This interview at Music Consultant might help provide a bit of context to how things have been developing for music labels over the past few years.

If you’re a fan of the Foo Fighters (or even if you’re not), you might also find some useful promotional tips in this article by Albert Costill who outlines 10 business lessons that the Foos have provided so far…



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