Spending your days writing songs might be your dream job, but if it really is a job, you’re going to have to put your guitar down once in a while and deal with the business end of songwriting. But all the words we associate with songwriting business — royalties, copyright, splits, points, etc. — can be […]
You’ve probably heard the many stories of famous singers and bands who struggled to get a recording contract at the start of their careers. The Beatles were famously turned down by Decca Records (“the Beatles have no future in show business”). There’s a funny thing that happens in our brains when we hear that someone […]
How far into the future do you think about your songwriting? Where do you want to be and what do you want to be doing in a year’s time? It’s definitely worth thinking about, because if you’ve got no specific plan, it means that anything that happens with your songwriting will come down to random […]
Like starting the songwriting process by working out the chords first? There are benefits and dangers. Read “Writing a Song From a Chord Progression” to get this process working properly for you. If you read my blog regularly you know that I deal mainly with the structure of songwriting. I think of songwriting in the popular genres […]
The world of songwriting — in fact, the world of music in general — often rewards dreamers. The hope that you’ll be a big name in the business someday almost seems to be a prerequisite to actually becoming a big name. When you think about it, hoping and wishing is probably an important stage for most […]
It’s not unusual in the pop music genres to partner up with one or more others to write songs. For many of the songs you see on the Billboard Hot 100, they come about as the result of a well-established songwriting team working together in a very formulaic way. Those songwriting teams can involve many […]
