So, you think you've written a great lyric, but you don't do music. Can't play an instrument and can't sing for your life. Wow. I resemble that remark! So, what happens? You have to find a good demo producer. You have to find someone who knows current music in the genre that you are targeting. That may not be easy. But, Songpress Music might be able to help you. We have six great demo producers as members of our site, and you can find them on the menu in the "Service Providers" and "Song Demo Production" section of the menu. I have personally used 4 out of the six, and can vouch for them. The other two came highly recommended to me.

Even if you aren't a member of Songpress Music, just go to the site and the menu, and get the information you need on demo producers. If you ever want your song to get recorded, you do need a good demo. Then you need the ability to pitch your song to A&R reps, producers, managers, publishers, or even the artists themselves. That's where you're going to need to join a website that lists pitch opportunities. Well, Songpress Music does that too. But, for that you need to be a member of Songpress Music, Songu.com, Taxi, or maybe some other site that I don't know of. So I recommend you check out your options. But, I will tell you from my experience, that you basically have two good choices. Songu.com offers the most pitch opportunities, if you can afford the site. It literally costs 5 times the price of Songpress Music for the top subscriptions. But I'm a member of it too rightr now, for the pitch opportunities. Songpress Music is still young, and doesn't have so many. But Songpress Music offers a lot of functionality that Songu doesn't, so you really should check them both out depending on what you are doing and who you are working with on music. Let which site works best for you, be your choice! And even if Songpress Music isn't your best choice right now, keep your eyes on it! We are expanding opportunities as quickly as we can, and we just might be your best choice just a little ways down the road!

I’ve run into a couple of issues with our pitches on the site.  Accordingly, I need to share more information.

First, I failed to tell everyone that Damon Spigle is a 16 year-old boy, and it appears that nobody researched him before they submitted their songs.  So, songs being pitched are more for an adult than a young man like him.  You might want to review his website at  https://www.damonspiglemusic.com/ so you know more of what to pitch for him.  I will be more careful in the future to recommend what ya’ll can review for the pitches.  I’m just not used to doing this.  And each of you that submits a song needs to know who you are pitching to.

Next, I’ve placed pitch criteria on the home page under the “Site Blog” tab in the center of the page.  After pitching for years myself and a whole lot of rejections, I have learned some standards that I will be looking for.  I also learned a whole lot from a book called, “The Art Of Writing Great Lyrics.”  This is a great book by Pamela Philips Oland, and it helped me to learn proper formatting, structure, and style.  I recommend it to everyone!  All of our songs get judged by things covered in the book, and much more.

You can check out the pitching evaluation criteria at: https://songpressmusic.com/davej56/blog/8/pitching-your-music-and-songs

All this is good, but in the end, songwriting is still the most subjective thing I’ve ever dealt with, other than my ex wife!  So, you can tie down the structure and timing of a song, and have a great melody, but it still needs to be based on a great idea that is well developed into the lyric.  And that is where it get’s so subjective.  None of us alone can determine what the solicitor of the songs will like or dislike.  And so we are destined to fail quite often in our selections just to get our songs passed by him or her.

If I was submitting my songs for this pitch, here are the two I would send:

https://songpressmusic.com/dave/audio/182/the-best-things-in-life-are-free-v2

https://songpressmusic.com/dave/audio/187/my-country-girl-knows-the-way

These songs fit the format and timing pretty well.  Both have been pitched many times on Songu.com, and one of them was selected to go to the artist, twice.  But, no cigar!  This just goes to show that it doesn’t matter how good your song is, and it doesn’t matter how much you, your family, or your friends like the song.  Ultimately, the evaluator has to believe that the artist will want to sing it.  And of course, the artist has to want to sing it!

So, best of luck with your pitching!  It’s a rough road to ride upon!  But, it’s part of the deal.

An updated Roxfax comes out tomorrow, so hopefully I will have more new pitches to offer ya'll!  Since Rowfax updates most every end-of-day, Wednesday, you should be able to look for new pitch opportunities every Thursday, if I can get them out that fast.

Hello!

Some of you may wonder why we aren't set up specifically for you to sell licenses for people to do cuts on your songs. Well, we've been through that, and found that it dirtied up the water on original songs. When you sell a copyright on a song, the buyers usually want to know that the song is clean--no prior cuts of any kind. The same is true for major players in the business who might want the first cut of the song by license. There are websites out there that you can join to sell covers on these songs, but we don't recommend it. You make very little money, and again, the songs get dirtied up if you do sell random licenses.  And you may not have any idea who even bought the license, because is was sold by the site. You may get a name, but that really doesn't normally mean much.

If you cut the song yourself and do streaming sales, that's your business, and that's okay.  But then again, you have dirtied up the waters for your copyright sales and for major license sales when you do this. So, you need to disclose that when you go to sell the copyright of a song that's been sold on streaming sites, including here on Songpress Music.  It's just best to be transparent.

The above may not always hold true, as the buyer may not care if the song isn't really well known. And, lots of Artists cut songs that have been cut before. Like songwriting itself, what gets cut is very subjective. But in any case, it can't get cut if the artist doesn't have the opportunity to hear the song. And that's where Songpress Music comes in. Although there is much more to Songpress Music than making the song available to be heard. Songpress Music is also about getting the song ready to be heard, then giving it the potential to be heard. That's the subject of another blog entry or more!

Now, this also gets a little hairy when you post songs for sale on here or anywhere, because people get to listen to them before buying them, which is a type of streaming. Well, that's part of the deal and they know that when they buy. However, your profile on this site can be locked down to your followers only viewing and listening. You can also keep your profile private like this and only invite who you want to listen to your songs on here. Plus, we even require Fans to pay a small fee to join the site, just to minimize the likelihood for rogue visitors and low-level members to stream and steal the ideas of your songs. But, it's still an honor system to an extent, and we depend on people to be honest. Yes, there's a risk, but you face that risk even more if people don't have a little skin in the game.

So, that's our basic philosophy and a part on why we charge Fans for membership on Songpress. We also charge because as users, they are potentially in need of support services and they have other features available to them.  And not meaning to digress, that will be the subject of another blog entry.