Here’s a copy of an e-mail I sent out today.  It updates you about our program. ~ R 

Hello David.  You song Lost In Blue is very good.  I did a once through & immediately thought of the recent & open, call for music at Music Dealers for an old time 50s or 60s Country song about loneliness.  This song you’ve made can hop over to Country rather nicely.  The goal of the Songs2Share program – one of the goals – is to set up a group of songwriters & artists so we can submit to these calls by creating a new recording if needed – on short notice. 

 I’ve thought of approaching demo companies, as they already have some melodies in their catalog to choose.  They also make melodies on a regular basis & can work fast.  & they own good recording equipment.

 May I send this MP3 to one demo company I’ve worked with, along with a copy of the Call For Music from the MusicDealers.com board & tell them about what I’m doing & see if they’ll sign on?

 I’d like to see the lyric & perhaps, tweak that 2^nd verse.  I heard several images & while I know you like your images, just want to check the flow.  The first verse flows so nicely, the 2^nd verse is where most songwriters hang up.  It’s that verse you got to watch.  You put the short i in your rhyme, which is the same as the i sound in your title – Lost IN Blue which is great.  Do you have a long u rhyme?  Might be a good idea. 

 We won’t be able to get a recording for this call.  I think it ends the 12^th.  But one step at a time.  Also, I’ve decided to add purchase of a lifetime license to Indie artists (sold less than 100,000 CDs) to our license agreement.  How much to charge is still open.  I made a survey form & posted the link at our MySpace page.  If you can go there and take the survey, I’d appreciate it very much.  I’m doing this all alone & any help at this point, is gladly accepted.

 We sold our first song license to a recording artist over 2 years ago.  A couple of teenage twins in the UK called Duo Canto.  Their pic is in our top friends at MySpace and you can go listen to their vocal cover of our song Celebrate The Day at their page (which you should cover too! – I have 5 female covers & no males & you have a lovely vocal!  Wish we could buy you some studio time & get a radio quality recording David+).  Legally, because their license is expired they should have to remove that song from their MySpace page.  But I don’t want them to take it down & it’s one of my co-writes & Clare doesn’t care either.  It is exposure & they should be able to sell that recording for the rest of their lives.

 They’ll never sound like that again – ever.  It’s a wonderful vocal performance.  So to me as a songwriter, they can have that song forever & sell their recording, even if they make it big & sell a million copies for the one time license fee, they gave that song EXPOSURE – S2S goal, another one, get the song the LARGEST audience.  The SONG.  & the songwriter will earn royalties. 

 So = how much should a lifetime license be?  And, are you willing to let the artist take your song & hopefully, make a hit for that one time fee?  I sure the heck am.  It’s non-exclusive so you sell as many licenses to as many Indie artists as you can find that want to buy a license.  & maybe a major artist will hear the song & come knocking to record the song.  These are also Non-Broadcast licenses.  If they want to get their recording onto the radio, they have to come back & buy a Broadcast License, which is on the back burner as it demands research to get the text right.  I think the future of music will eliminate the Performing Right Organizations as they are a middle man/middle management and the radios may get a better deal for themselves & the songwriters & performers, by buying flat licenses for blocks of music directly from music brokers.  The major performance monitoring station in the USA was turned off by the longtime family that used to run it, a few years ago – so I’ve been told.  So monitoring & paying middle people will go down kicking & fighting as music continues to evolve.  Just my thought.

 $250.00.  That’s a good price.  If an artist can’t afford that or doesn’t want to pay that much but wants to cover one of our songs, & I do go around telling artists at MySpace = “You should cover Celebrate The Day (or another title) for free.  It works with your vocal style” when I find a match– a lot, so I’m putting the word out, “- on a demo for license exchange.”  They make a recording that Songs2Share feels can be used to market that song, they get a lifetime license to make as many recordings and sell them & keep the money, perform the song forever, and try to get a licensed placement if they choose to market.  The original songwriter still owns a royalty percentage of any licensed fee & the recording artist owns a percentage of any licensed fee their first recording earns as well – while the songwriter can sell or give away copies of the new recording & keep all monies generated.  This is also a Non-Broadcast license.  If the recording artist wants to get their song on the radio, they have to come  back & purchase a Broadcast License.  So the artist gets a well crafted song, makes the recording, gives all rights to that recording to the songwriter except a % of licensing fees generated, & then they can perform, record & sell copies of any recording forever.  If I can get a great, even good recording of one of my songs that I own except to share with the recording artist any licensed fees generated, I’m happy to give them a lifetime license.

 A lot of people write a lot of new songs every day.  If you want to get your songs attention, & an artist to cover them, give them a good deal & they will give your song EXPOSURE.

 Peace.~ RobertaS2S  

  ps.  Music Dealers splits their license fees 50/50 with owner of the recording/songwriter.  Pump Audio splits them 65/35 with owner of the recording/songwriter for a licensed placement.  Some of the calls for music from Music Dealers are as high as $50,000.00.  You know a lot of music licensing companies are getting those same calls & sending in playlists for consideration, but you got to get ON the playlist to have a chance.  & to do that you need a radio quality recording of your song.  It’s worth it to me, to get a crew together to make custom songs for these big calls.  I’ll even write a lyric as some calls give you text they’d like in the lyric & throw my hat into the mix.  It’s sort of a music lottery, as they get such good music to choose from – you just got to hit it right for that customer.  J   

Daddy On His Locomotive Engine ~

Karl & I just came from church today. 1st time either of us has been to a service in a couple years.  Real nice.  Had videos of kids from the classes telling “What do you think  your dad should do on Father’s Day…?”  Cute answers & wonderful natural kid responses.

Pastor made a very relevant comparision.  He talked about how fathers should - Tell their kids that - things are going to be OK, be happy, life is good, Our Heavenly Father is watching over us (if you’ve got it right with him) & He will see us through any tough times - instead of speaking worry & doom & unrest to their children.  He hit on the current condition of “the world” and that this is a very challenging time & still, we must, (fathers were his target), keep the talk to the children uplifting.

He also hit on forgiving your own father if he had parenting “shortcomings.”  LOL  The great thing he said about that is —- “Get over it…”  I said Gina’s name aloud as she has an issue with her childhood somehow being connected to current problems & constantly goes to the past in justiying the present.  And also a few Amens for my own childhood father “shortcomings.”

He told all the kids to hug their dads today until their heads popped off. 

That’s a cool line.
Happy Father’s Day to All Dads who nurture & all Men who lead wisely

Saturday, May 23, 2009 

The Dirty Side of the Music Business Category: Music   By Duff McKagan The Dirty Side of the Music Business Up to this point in this column, I’ve been writing almost strictly about financial vehicles or wading into the economic muck that we as a nation have gotten ourselves into and trying to bring some clarity to the situation. If I may be permitted, I would like this week to go on a little rant about some things that have been going on in my business and also how the business model for music has pretty much been flipped upside down over the last 10 to 15 years. Back when I was in GN’R, bands like us could pretty much operate at a break-even point on the road because acts were selling more records than is even imaginable these days. The reason for the dramatic downturn in record sales, of course, was the digitizing of music. Putting music on CDs meant it had to be in digital form; eventually this led to the situation where digital files like the MP3 were divorced from any physical product, making the Internet and home computers the prime means of distributing music. A rock tour back then, at the dawn of the digital era, was really just a huge commercial to sell your record. Because a larger portion of people get their music for free via piracy these days, touring, “merch” sales (mostly t-shirts, but also stickers and pins and anything else you can slap your band’s logo onto), and licensing of one’s music for ads and ringtones must support the average music act these days. The major record labels missed the only real opportunity to get paid from illegal downloading back in 1997 or so. We all remember the Napster conundrum when Metallica sued them, right? Hey, as far as I’m concerned, Metallica had every right to demand payment for their hard-wrought recordings. But there was another deal on the table then from Napster that was never really publicized—and this where the “major labels” fucked up in my opinion. Napster was making truckloads of dough off banner ads back then. It seemed the site was the most looked-at space on the Web and therefore a hot property. Car companies, cola bottlers, movie companies, and many others were paying top-dollar to get access to those Napster-glued eyeballs back then. Napster offered to share this ad revenue with the major labels so that artists would get paid for the downloading of songs that Napster made available for free. It now seems like the perfect business model for what was then a largely unanticipated future of digitized music. The majors balked and a huge opportunity was missed. Again, in 2005 or so, the remaining major labels tried a lawsuit against pirate music source Kazaa. And again, the company under attack offered to share its ad revenues but were turned down. Actually one major peeled off from the lawsuit and did a deal with the Kazaa; the rest just simply dug their heels in and are still in the same spot to this day, left in limbo with neither them or their artists getting paid. Nowadays, if a band wants an even remote shot at getting a deal with a major label, they must yield to the new business paradigm of giving up a portion of their publishing, their merch sales, and even concert receipts to the label in return for the release and marketing of the band’s music. This all seems dirty to me, but it’s the way things are now done—at least in the old corporate music world. Back in the mid-to-late 1970s, there was a grassroots revolt against the then-bloated music industry (read the book Hit Men to get an idea of just how extreme the business had gotten). Independent record labels like IRS, Slash, SST, and Beggars Banquet began to spring up, giving new and different bands a chance to succeed and reach a national audience. The same thing has happened again in recent years as a result of Internet distribution. But right now, there’s almost too much information out there. A club booker now books bands based on how many views they get on their MySpace page. Bands have to hustle—maybe even more than in the pre-MySpace era—just to get a gig at a shitty bar. What seemed like a revolution fueled by the Web now looks somewhat tenuous. But maybe the rest of the dominoes are ready to fall—and by that, I mean the ancillary parts of the music industry. I hope there is a true music revolution bubbling right beneath the surface of the underground that will hopefully surprise us all and get us away from, for instance, the vanilla agenda rock radio feels it has to follow these days in order to sell ads. Music blogs, internet radio, mashup sites—there’s a lot of things out there, of course. But with the possible exception of iTunes, the world is still waiting for the next wave of tools and institutions that will allow new acts to ingrain themselves into the popular consciousness the way bands like GNR were able to do—to create generational anthems, to mark moments in time for an entire nation, to unite our culture through music. Here’s hoping their arrival is right around the corner.  Source: Column from Playboy.com

Ontario proposes new law for online ticket sales
Category: Music

The Ontario government took aim yesterday at U.S. entertainment giant Ticketmaster by introducing a new law that would block companies from charging scalpers’ prices for tickets to concerts and sporting events on resale websites they own.

This is a music oriented newsletter filled with great stuff.  Here’s the link for the whole story:

http://www.bigmeteor.com/newsletter/apr2009.shtml 

SECTION FIVE: HELPFUL RESOURCES FOR YOUR BAND

5.1 RESOURCES - GENERAL

SoundSpar
Chris contact@soundspar.com
www.soundspar.com
A new battle of the bands website for unsigned artists. Sign up free today!

Music BC
#530-425 Carrall St., Vancouver, BC V6B 6E3
PH: 604-873-1914 FX: 604-873-9686
http://www.musicbc.org
A non-profit society dedicated to providing information, education, funding, advocacy, awareness and networking opportunities to nurture, develop and promote the spirit, growth, and sustainability of the BC Music community.

Bandit A&R Newsletter
68-70 Lugley St., Newport, PO30 5ET UK
PH: +44-1983-524110
John bandit.icb@aweber.com
http://www.banditnewsletter.com
Helping ambitious bands target their demos to labels, publishers etc.

Shutting the label door

Published August 29, 2007 marketing , music 0 Comments

I’ve talked quite a lot here about the future of music and of record labels’ role in it. Well last night I saw that future in action, and it was in the shape of an iconic Minneapolis superstar jumping around like a mad man on stage at the dome.

Prince has sold out 21 nights at the O2’s 20,000 capacity venue, managing to get a half a million Londoners to see this frankly knock-out show, without needing to resort to the ridiculous prices of the Madonna tours. As you go into the concert, you also get a free copy of his latest album. Before the uber-cool one comes on stage, we see promo videos for all the merchandise which is on sale outside, and then there’s the after show (where he played another 12 songs last night), for those that want to keep on going (and keep on spending).

In Prince’s case, after the huge row over the use of his name in the early 90s, I’m sure he’d like nothing more than the demise of the majors. And, of course, most artists can’t sell out 140,000 seats in 20 minutes (as Prince did with the initial run). But it does go to show: if the music can be almost freely distributed (remember the actual album launch was a cover-mount on The Mail on Sunday), then the artists can make their money by playing great concerts, flogging the hell out of ancillary sales and the odd private appearance at billionaire’s birthday parties.

The Future: letter from Bob Lefsetz

There’s too much music made by too many people and performers are frustrated they’re broke and listeners are completely overwhelmed. What’s going to happen?

Hit music will survive. Even if the definition of a hit is a shadow of its former self. There won’t be as many sales, few people will even be aware of the track and the act will not be able to tour, or, if so, very briefly (did you catch the gross for the Jonas Brothers movie…ALREADY has-beens?)

Making it is so difficult that most “musicians” give up very early in the process. It’s easy to write and record a song and distribute it. Everything that was difficult yesterday is easy today. You just fire up GarageBand, select some loops, create a track and upload the result to MySpace and you’re an “artist”!

Well, no. You’re someone who’s recorded a track that most people don’t care about, probably because it sucks. But what if it’s good?

It almost definitely isn’t. But, if it were, most people STILL wouldn’t care, because they’re not aware of it. So, we’ve got two halves of the pie, quality and awareness.

Let’s start with quality. You can be a supernova like Picasso, incredibly good from the start. But it’s almost impossible. Usually you’ve got to experiment, practice, go down the road to dead ends until you finally come up with something good. And most people don’t have the patience for this process. Everybody wants instant fame. And instant riches. And it’s easier than ever to be instantly famous, but it doesn’t pay well. You can be on a reality TV show and be broke and working as a waitress. Furthermore, fame doesn’t possess the ogle value it used to. We make fun of the famous. As for riches…they’re almost unreachable. Which is why most “artists” give up.

It was easier in the nineties. The formula was simple. If you were incredibly cute or beautiful you got a record label to sign you and put a ton of money behind you, filming an expensive video for ubiquitous airplay on MTV and paying radio stations to play your record. The system was easy to figure out. Even though there was a winnowing process, which frequently had little to do with musical talent. Today? If you can get a label interested, they want to pay less and own more and success is a fraction of what it once was. Which is why if you want to be rich and famous you start a Website. Unless you’re truly a musician.

A true musician HAS to play. The money is secondary. As is fame. Sure, you want both, but you’ve got no choice. And now, with the field separated so clearly between the wannabes and the true devotees, we can start to see the future of the music industry. Those who see themselves as musicians are going to practice and play for Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours, building an audience all along the way, and eventually a great portion of the rest of the public is going to wake up and pay attention.

Mutt Lange started off doing sound-alike records. Reg Dwight recorded demos. So many of the stars of yore paid incredible dues. So when they were finally foisted upon the marketplace we were stunned by their talent. “Your Song”? A classic still performed today. A Jonas Brothers track? That’s an exercise in finance, based on marketing. Just like no one wants Hanson anymore, in a few years the Jonas Brothers will be a nostalgia item that does a fraction of their present business. The boys have got experience in promotion, in acting, but in music? Their musical history is very brief, they’ve got very little in the way of chops. Rather than practicing in their basement, they’re busy performing in throwaway Disney pics.

You don’t have to be thirty to get enough experience. Those piano lessons your parents make you take count. As do all those rehearsals in the aforementioned basement. And no matter how good your musical skills, performing is a separate talent completely. Like an NBA player with enough games under his belt not to choke in the playoffs, you’ve got to perform enough to be able to hit every note and keep the audience in the palm of your hand. So when people drag their friends to your show, they’re mesmerized.

Everything you hated is essentially gone. Looks-based music. Formulaic radio. Usual suspect writers and producers. They all still exist, but suddenly they’re the sideshow. The real money is in the bands that play live. But people really only want to see the dinosaurs in quantity, because they’ve been at it so long that they’ve not only got a catalog of great tunes, they’re great on stage.

Walk into the wilderness with me. If you believe in yourself, you’re never going to give up, you’re going to play until you make it. And believe me, if you put in all that time and no one is paying attention you will give up, that life is just too frustrating. But if you’ve got talent, you’ll see signposts along the way, enough positive feedback to keep you going.

So, maybe we’ll have a vibrant music scene in the future. When the old game plays down to nothing (and Terra Firma just wrote down their EMI investment), and the new music-based acts have enough hours/time/practice/performance under their belt to gain a head of steam. Instead of being worked on a track by a street-teamer looking to get ahead, a true friend will hip you to something that blows your mind to the point where you’ll have to tell everybody else you know.

The opportunities are not only in playing, there are giant holes in infrastructure as well. These new acts need managers. Organizations akin to labels to run their businesses. Even concert promoters to believe in them and showcase them live. None of the old farts want anything to do with these developing acts, because the payday is so far away, and a trickle at first.

We could be on the verge of a renaissance. But it could take five years to start to come clear and ten to burst into a supernova. Practice, practice, practice. If you’re truly good, you’ll find an audience. But remember, it won’t happen instantly and you’ll struggle as opposed to living the high life. You’ll be driving a rickety old van as opposed to flying first class. But when the money starts to come in, it will POUR!

Yes, you want to get paid. But even more, you want people who are touched by your original music, who NEED to go to the show. Which will be cheap. Because you’ll want a big tent, you’ll want to include everybody. That’s the Net ethos. The old boys are about being exclusionary, whereas today’s kids know everybody else in their entire town!

The audience is waiting. Listeners want something great to pop up on their radar, that they can believe in. It’s human nature. Think of listeners, not executives or gatekeepers. You can write the script. We’re ready for you!

Source:

Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/

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Everybody can write poetry.  They teach us that in grade school.  Anybody
can write a song.  

If that song releases some pent up emotion or demon or lovely feeling,
then writing the song is a good thing.  I do agree songwriters and
performing artists need to practice, practice, practice.  And I also
believe the cream rises to the top.

So keep at it and your songs will improve just as you performance skills
improve.

~ Roberta  

February 15, 2009

We’ve Found Our Specialty 

Songs2Share staff agree that we are now a song licensing company focused on LOVE SONGS!!!  Everybody sings them.  A lot of movies use them.  So we are seeking them out and will be known in the industry as the best love songwriters in town.  Check your song catalogs songwriters+  Everyone has a love song or two.  Visit the website, LOGIN and upload your love song submission.  We’ll e-mail you when we receive them.

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A Songs2Share Celebration

We just finished up negotiations with the Robert’s Gym Board, in Roberts Illinois = and they are very happy to have S2S hold our first concert in their building!   Mark your calendars for June 28, 2009.  We’ll be closing out the Roberts celebration of Ford County’s 150th birthday. We are also exploring the idea of small house jams.  We have a staffer who wants to do drumming circles and this will help keep her entertained!

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VIDEO

Apple is believed to be wrapping up a feature in iTunes 8 that will allow users to stream their iTunes video purchases directly from the company’s servers for playback anywhere without eating up your own storage space.  =  We’ve added video to our marketing program.  Videotape everything.  Buy a good camera.  Video is here and very saleable!
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New Songwriter ~ Annie Jackson is working a song with S2S.

Josh at Ji! Designs made us a great animated banner and is now working  a header/banner for our MySpace sites. 

Thanks and a hug to each one of you.