Music Publishing & Songwriting

As the annual CMJ music marathon staggers to a close, and hundreds of bands, singer-songwriters, and other aspiring musicians pack up their gear and get back in the van, I thought the time might be ripe for a quick cost-benefit analysis of that thirty-minute showcase at Mercury Lounge. After all the costs of an NYC trip, gas, transportation, hotel, gear rentals, publicity, registration, not to mention an evening’s work with no pay, did the gig pay off? Did that A&R guy on the guest-list even show up? Are there more bookings or better bookings to come, as a result? Did it add signficantly to the fanbase? Will the people who saw the show still remember your set, after the next four bands did their shows? Has any artist or musician ever once bothered to do a cost-benefit analysis?

Have you ever thought: “There’s got to be a better way” ?

Maybe there is. Here’s one very simple approach that just might work. It’s an old solution, with an excellent history of success. But for some reason, it seems to have fallen out of favor in the indie rock and singer-songwriter world these days– although it remains quite popular in the world of urban music. It’s main advantages are that it’s low-cost, it can be done from anywhere, and it can transform a career overnight. Ready?

Write a hit.

Okay. I didn’t say it was an easier way. I just said it might, under certain circumstances, be a better way to move your career ahead as an artist. Rather than scraping money together to record your own album, or even an EP; rather than an endless succession of pay-to-play showcases in LA and NY; rather than sending off material to an increasingly irrelevant array of record labels; maybe it would be better to focus all efforts on creating one great breakthrough song. Don’t write and record 12 good songs. Just make one hit.

A hit means:

It fits a radio format. It has a concept–it’s about something interesting, provocative, funny, unique. It’s memorable (with a chorus, or at least a few lines that repeat).It’s definining– the lyric and music capture and express exactly what makes you or your band unique. Most of all, it’s reactive– it’s different enough, shocking enough, touching enough or exciting enough that a casual listener will stop what he or she is doing, and try to figure out how to hear it again. Here’s a fast-acting recipe for success:

Step One: Write and record one song you truly believe is a hit. Testing it in front of an audience is a good idea– especially an audience not pre-disposed to like it.

Step Two: Put the song up on Myspace. Do an inexpensive, home-made video (hopefully something creative and interesting) of the song and put it up on YouTube. Just to give it a fighting chance, you could do a little viral marketing to drive your audience to see it.

Step Three: Watch what happens. If you wrote a hit, people will react. That’s how hits work. Look at “Bubbly”, “Hey There Delilah”, “Crank Dat”, “Beautful Girls”… All of these songs broke largely out of nowhere, with little or no marketing campaign beyond a YouTube and Myspace following. All of these songs catapulted the artist to an entirely different level of their career in less time than it takes to write and record a four-song EP. If you write a hit, you can be sure that labels, booking agents, management, and media will come to you– rather than you chasing them.

If the songs don’t get much of a reaction, then the truth is: you didn’t write a hit. So try again. Repeat as necessary.

No one said writing a hit was easy. Neither is an endless succession of self-produced albums, industry showcases, and hunting for a record label. It might be time to try a new “old” road to success.