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Two Terrible Emails To Ensure You Will Not Get Your Music Licensed

January 28, 2013 by Andy

As my mailing list has grown and my twitter following increases, I’ve been getting emails from some of you. The crazy part is despite the writing I do, I still get some of the most ridiculously crappy emails you’ve ever seen in your life.

Today I want to highlight two such emails and encourage the folks that sent them to write down any complaints, put them in a letter, address an envelope, and then crumple it up and throw it away. There’s no helping you if you’re constantly sending garbage to people.

Here is the first email

Seriously? They haven’t even changed their default mail name from “Yahoo! Mail” – and, oh yeah, they SPELLED MUSIC WRONG. Are you serious? How does this person expect me to respond? Here are a few responses that immediately jump to mind:

NO!
YES, I am able to, but I won’t.
What the hell is “muaic?”
Dear Yahoo Mail, I wasn’t aware that non-living computer entities were even self-aware, much less writing compelling “muaic” that I may or may not be able to listen to! PLEASE tell me more!

Look. If you can’t write a complete sentence, give up now. If you can’t do an inkling of homework BEFORE you reach out to someone, give up now.

People will tell you to follow your dreams – I am telling you to stop immediately following your dreams if you can’t write a complete sentence with properly spelled words – you’re wasting everyone’s time. I’m more compelled to open spam emails than garbage like this.

Moving on to email number two

This person can at least write sentences and has included their name. Big improvement.

However, they COMPLETELY miss the point of one of my FIRST key elements of marketing your music: they make it all about them.

I’ve blurred out the info but take a look:

Do you see why people aren’t listening to your music? Do you get it?

If I sent you an email that was incredibly verbose and offered nothing but biographical information, would you ever read it? No, you wouldn’t. You’d sigh heavily, throw your sandwich across the room and run to cry under your bed.

Remember, your goal is to get the person to listen to your music, but you want to be relevant to the person you’re writing to.

If you want to jump-start your outreach efforts, subscribe to my email list. You’ll get a free 8-part music licensing how-to course delivered right to your inbox.

3 Must-Know Music Licensing Contract Points

January 14, 2013 by Andy

Many musicians find the legalities of the music industry scary or, according to some research from my blog and newsletter, haven’t even looked at a contract. In fact, the music industry itself has made a point to tout it’s legal strength anytime someone tries to do something inventive and effective in the music space, rather than trying to learn from or emulate the result (zing!).

The fact of the matter is that yes, you do need a lawyer to review your contracts and licenses. However, you don’t need one in order to understand the fundamentals of a license. You see there are three key terms when a television show, film, or ad agency wants to license music. These 3 terms are also the foundation of negotiations and help determine the cost of the copyright to be used. Here they are:

Media: This is essentially the “what” of a music license. Will it be broadcast on TV, streamed on the internet, or will it be used for an in-house presentation? It can be any one, or any combination of, pretty much anything you can think of.

Term: This is the “when” of a music license. Licenses can be as short as a one-time usage or as long as eternity (called perpetuity). While there are few times as an artist you would want to license a song in perpetuity, this is something music libraries do with relative frequency. It also saves a huge headache for the producing company, and keep in mind a license in perpetuity is only for the ONE usage outlined in the media definition.

Territory: This is the “where” of a music license. This will delineate where exactly this particular project is going to show up. Will it show up all over the world? Will it just be in Ohio? Maybe it’s going to be shown at a convention center.

There you have it, the licensing basics. Keep in mind all of the above can be adjusted and negotiated and the cost of the license should reflect such adjustments.

One final point: It comes down to how many people are going to see a project, and how much you value your music, the exposure, and the project itself. If someone wants to license your song for all-media, worldwide in perpetuity (which I would HIGHLY advise against unless you’re running a music library), they’re anticipating a lot of people are going to see it. This means the exposure is high, which is great, but they’re also asking for a lot of rights which means it should be a cost consideration vs. the history of your song.

When it comes to contracts of course consult a lawyer before signing anything. But understanding these basics should help give you a good idea of how to gauge a music license and evaluate a proposed fee to ensure you’re getting a great deal.

If you’re REALLY serious about getting your music licensed, subscribe to my newsletter for a free 8-part how-to course, music publishing 101 audio download, and more!

A Recent Email To An Independent Musician Like You.

January 9, 2013 by Andy

I recently responded to a friend’s email and I realized it has some fantastic tips that every independent musician can use if they’re looking to take control of their music career, get their music licensed, or simply improve their music marketing. Here it is (edited for anonymity’s sake):

It is my personal view that musicians need to know that they are entrepreneurs, and not by choice!, with the industry the way it is currently.

The reality is you can do pretty much everything you need to except for have a lawyer review contracts – and even that you can learn a lot on your own (but seriously, always have a lawyer review). You may have already realized this.

So to get started, you should focus on areas where you think your music will excel – I’d recommend honing in on a specific media (ie: advertising, film, tv, video games). Each of them have their own plusses and minuses, however if you have a particular contact or know someone who works at the following (I just wrote a piece on this to my email newsletter (you can sign up here). It’s free but I try to provide real actionable advice for independent musicians just like you):

Advertising:
– Ad agency: Loads of folks work at these, you need to talk to individual ones. See the newsletter for specific titles, but friends are your BEST inroads.
– Brand: You want someone in the marketing department ultimately. Often times brands let the agency choose the music, however if it’s a music centric brand like Coke or Pepsi, they get more involved.

Film/Tv:
– For TV you’re looking for production companies that are working on particular TV shows – you can find these by watching the credits on any show that you think your music could fit with.
– Films are no trickier, check out Variety – you want the general status of the film to be in post production (where they typically are licensing the music).

Video Games:
– Most major video game companies have music departments that deal with licensing the music they want and hiring composers. For composing custom, you need to be in touch with the “audio” folks. For music, they’ll have separate people of varying titles. Some googling goes a long way

Also, if you have a bunch of scratch tracks that never turned into songs, or songs that were never released, I highly recommend digging them up. It’s nice to have more to offer. You can also mess around with cutting them down into 30 and 60-second versions.

If I were you, I’d start talking to your really good friends and see how many of them know someone at an agency, production company, or work in TV & film. You might be surprised. Then try to arrange a meeting with that person (or if you know someone directly, even better).

More questions? Let me know – and seriously, the newsletter will be useful to you in a lot of ways.

Also, I go into A LOT more detail about building genuine relationships and how to put your best foot forward when pitching yourself. I’ve also covered some great info on what to say when you find a great connection.

Again, you can sign up here.