The music business is build 99% built on relationships. So many music supervisors, publishers and others who place music are inundated daily with strangers submitting music. So here’s a far better practice. Before just sending your music over blindly to everyone on your email list every time you record a new song, here’s a better practice:
DON’T THROW SHIT AT A WALL HOPING SOME WILL STICK!
Blasting to every possible email address you come across will not help you. If you consider wasting time and money a help, then yes, it will help you. Seriously though, you want to take the time, research each music supervisor, publisher and any others in your sights BEFORE submitting
BUILD A RELATIONSHIP
Spend some time speaking to the person you’d like to submit to. You may find out very quickly that they don’t even handle your style or genre of music, in which case, you don’t want to waste their time or yours. Be courteous. Don’t act like you’re the best thing around because EVERYONE thinks they are. Be different. Be kind. Be NICE. Be the ones with integrity. THAT is what makes a difference to a music supervisor.
ASK PERMISSION
Once you’ve had the chance to speak with your “friend”, and hopefully you’ve turned being strangers into being on a first name basis, only then is it cool to ASK if it would be ok if you submitted music. You might spend time befriending them only for “we’re not accepting music currently.” and that’s ok. Down the road, they might get in touch with YOU if they need something along your style. They will remember you as THAT GUY who was nice, who had integrity.
BEST FOOT FORWARD, ONE CHANCE AT A FIRST IMPRESSION (and any other cliche you can think of!)
More than likely, you’re probably wasting your time submitting to everyone blindly. Most do not take unsolicited material and like us, we don’t accept submissions off the street, so to speak. If someone sends in an email to submit music and I don’t know who they are, that email is going in the trash. “Why?… How can someone be so mean?” you might ask.
HERE’S THE HONESTY: Consider how many artists submit blindly per week to music supervisors alone. For bigger names and publishers, it’s probably in the thousands. Do you really think they would have the time to do anything else in their lives if they had to “be nice” and listen and critique every single submission?
Be considerate of TIME. If you value your own, then value theirs.
Just introduce yourself, and then after you’ve emailed back and forth a few times, ask if it would be ok to submit a song or two. Then, submit your absolute BEST. Best written and best produced and without a doubt, best possible quality. If you don’t have broadcast quality, get back to the studio and rerecord. DO NOT SUBMIT music that is not top notch, even if it is an acoustic/vocal version. Make it the BEST, professionally recorded, acoustic/vocal version you can deliver. Otherwise, you may just blow your one chance at that first impression.
I can’t tell you how many submissions I’ve been through this week alone that the artist “thought” was good enough quality for airing! Sometimes I WISH I could be as mean and nasty as Simon Cowell IE. “What are you THINKING?” But I’m not. I am writing this blog in the hopes it reaches at least some of you who think it’s ok to submit music that YOU KNOW is not great quality, with instruments not performed/recorded in sync with each other, with pitchy vocals, with careless mixes, without mastering, and on and on and on.
It’s NOT ok to submit “an idea” or “a demo”. Submit professional tracks. No one is going to listen past 10 seconds (or less) to a horribly recorded demo and say, I see the potential of the song… here’s $50,000 to go rerecord it.” It just doesn’t happen!
1 ON 1 will take submissions as projects come in, for now through Music Xray. Like it or not, reviewing tons of music is a ton of work. Writing back to each and every artist takes time. By asking for a small fee for submission, it also weeds out those who are less confident in their own product and might be the tipping point to make them reconsider submitting their music, AFTER it’s more professionally recorded.
If you would like to submit, please visit these links:
Good luck.
1 on 1 Entertainment 