You may have a passion for music… but:

You may have a passion for music – but realize that not everyone is meant to be a writer or a performer!  

Often those who are more biased into the analytical side of the brain have wonderful technical abilities which are sorely needed by those who are fully living in the artistic half of the mind!   

Alternatively – You may have tried writing music and come up with stuff that sounds fabulous **but** does not move people – (including your self).  If this is your story, it could be life-changing and highly gratifying to create collaborative partnerships with HOT writers who offer the other half of the equation.   This way you can start making music and money together!

These folks have been out there taking risks and getting into trouble – so they HAVE the raw soul experiences to fuel powerful music.  However these same people often lack the analytical skills or personal resources, to take it all the way, on their own. 

It makes total sense to share writing and publishing credit in situations where a team approach resulted in the final piece.  Just working in collaborative partnerships with people who are fundamentally different than you – and yet the same: in a some strange way – can really bring your own creative genius to life.

One of the secrets to Madonna's massive success – was that she hired a different producer for practically every album.  She brought her creative value to the table to combine with the unique style and flavor that each producer offered.  Madonna was unique among music powerhouses because she managed to remain fresh, relevant, and profitable for more than a decade after her initial splash.   This type of success requires constant evolution and adaptability to remain current.

Professional Business Plans for Music: 

BIG NOTE!  

• If you are person who likes to read, and absorb information. 
• If you are analytical yet in touch with your musical soul. 
• If you are capable of organizing and motivating….  

There is a Need for YOU!

In case you hadn't noticed: many people prefer to thrive in a coherent STRUCTURE provided by someone else.

So many people gamble with their money in the music biz.  By arming your self with the right information, you can avoid the key mistakes that slay many wannabes. 

Position your self not only to make a world class income, but also enjoy an exciting line of work.  You could be really looking forward to getting out of bed each day, while helping great musicians GET PAID for doing what they do best.

Ready-To-Go Business Plans: 
 

Start Your Own Record Label

 
Start Your Own Music Publishing Company

What are Potential Sources of Cash Flow?

- Selling recordings at performances & Web   (Immediate Income)

- Running a separate promotion & booking operation for your artists.   (Immediate Income)

- Event services including your DJs.  (Immediate Income)

A few resources for taking it to the next level

The Music Business One-Stop!  I joined this web site – put together by a well known music industry resource.  It's really a public service because the cost is only about $5 a month.  It's a little challenging to navigate, but includes features such as a massive music law terms glossary and clause-by-clause analysis of various types of music industry contracts.   For about an extra $5 a month includes a huge resource directory where you can find contact info for all the who's whose in the business, including local agents and talent bookers.   This website might also be a good place to inquire about finding qualified legal representation.

- Professional recording & production services.  

- Royalties from successfully published/and/or distributed music.   (Long-term Big-time Income.)

The Creative Building Blocks

Have you read our Whole Brain Songwriting concept?

Well lets say that you took the opportunity to let your creativity simply pour out of you: unobstructed by the analytical side of your mind. Ideally when you are finished you should have lots of separate little phrases of inspirational music. These are the raw building blocks which your analytical mind can use to build a coherent song.

Meta Structures

Usually there are three distinct parts to a song. Verse, Chorus, and Bridge. Sometimes the bridge is just an instrumental "break" from the basic theme.

Once a song is properly arranged: the human brain can hear it once with total recall. We almost instinctively KNOW what will come next in a well developed song.

Once you get the sense of how power songs are structured: you will hear the basic patterns in anything from the Beetles to Beethoven.

Forget about that old idea of trying to come up with a "hook" for your song. In the best music, the WHOLE SONG is a hook!

Even the instrumental patterns are based on the same theme and variation arrangement. This is why most people can guess (or recall) the name of a well written song after hearing just a few notes from the introduction.

Your Emotional Soul-Palate

Often in various musical genres: the same melody will be repeated over and over while the backing chords are changed to subtly shift the emotional import.

An important key to developing great music is to become familiar with the unique chord structures common to various styles of music. These chords are your artistic palate: like the colors a visual artist uses to paint with.  The different "shades" of musical color enable you to express different feelings and moods in your music.

Taking the time to familiarize your self these essential chord options gives you a powerful basis for song writing.

Many courses exist for gaining this education in a few weeks without learning to read music

Free Online Interval Training for Your Ear. Automatically recognize musical structures.

Get the Chord Wheel – The Ultimate Tool for All Musicians – $14.99

Experienced "ears" in the business are those executives who are able to "hear" a hit. A big part of it is the spirit and intensity of an artist. But even more so it's the fundamental STRUCTURE of a song. To be honest: if a song has the right structure even a kid on the street can pick it out.

Those golden ears often prefer to hear a song in it's raw form without a fancy demo to obscure the underlying inspiration. An acoustic guitar or piano and a vocal should be enough. Even in electronic music: LESS is more when showing off the underlying strength of your songs.

If you song doesn't pull in the listener in its most basic form then it probably won't be a hit.

Throughout history – ALL great music has certain basic organizational features in common. For this discussion we will focus on the way this is done in pop music.

Note of Clarification: Obviously I'm an 80's kid – so the examples I'm using come from my youth. But you can try the same exercises and experiments with YOUR favorite genre. The patterns are essentially the same.

Click to open up this convenient link in another window and instantly listen to many of the song-examples we use in this course. www.Playlist.com  Just enter the name of the song into the "Playlist" search window. By clicking on the little arrow the song starts to play.

The songs examples mentioned here for discussion are property of their respective copyright owners.

Putting Them Together

The normal mistake is to use the analytical mind to come up with filler material to hold together a few inspired phrases. This is what wannabes call a song. But this does not make sense to the whole brain which craves circular loops known in music as theme and variation.

A powerhouse hit song is composed of repetitions of several strong musical phrases. In some cases such as "Born In the USA" by Bruce Springsteen, the song features only a single basic phrase pounded into the brain over and over for the entire song. ( Over 15 million albums sold. )

Note: for the purpose of this discussion, a musical phrase is a melodic/chord progression. We are not specifically referring to the words, but more to the tune and the chords that back it up.

If you would like to check out "The King of Pain" by Sting and the Police. You will find essentially two phrases repeated throughout the entire song.

Try listening to any of your favorite pieces and count the number of phrases used in the entire song. You will find that they are all STRONG ( also called active ). The same goes for lyrics – it's better to repeat impactful-phrases than to fill in with mediocre statements. Repetition builds memory.

Basically you can label each distinct phrase as follows: A,B,C,D. Listen again to the examples above.

And then listen to "Head Like a Hole" by Nine Inch Nails.

You will find various patterns of arranging these phrases.

Another great example to start off with is "Free Fallin" by Tom Petty.

In Country music: check out these best sellers: "Fast Cars and Freedom" by Rascal Flatts, "Otis Redding" by Sara Evans, and "Friends in Low Places" by Garth Brooks – (20 million albums sold).

If you listen to New Age Jazz check out anything by Craig Chaquico – for example: "Native Tongue". Just download it and listen, especially if you've never heard this phenomenal musician – make sure you can really hear it good – its like musical champaign & caviar. Pure class! Craig is the ex guitarist from Jefferson Starship. He offers a great example of these patterns in music without words. You may need to actually download this one rather than searching for it on Playlist.com

Click on this link to hear just how far back this goes.

- Submitted by Visitors - "Gone" by tobyMac.

Even in such diverse genres such as hard rock, blues, folk, hip-hop and the best selling rap etc. etc. etc… you will consistently find that your all time favorite music, in some way always conforms to this essential model.

As you listen to examples of great music: label the distinct phrases used and write out their patterns. Here are some popular arrangements of musical phrases -

AA BB AA BB CC DD

AB AB AB AB CD CD

AAAB AAAB CCCD

AAAA AAAA BBBB BBBB

Take note of how the phrases are arranged in groups.

Take the time to identify the order that the phrase-groups are repeated as well.

Staying Inspired

Knowing these secrets can be the absolute SUICIDE of creativity. Because thinking this way short circuits the natural inspirational processes in the brain.

For this reason we highly recommend that you separate the brainstorming stage of songwriting from the "producer" stages. Read Whole Brain Songwriting in order to discover how the human brain works the best when engaged in the creative process.

Most musicians might be better served to engage an analytical creative partner (called a producer/arranger) to help structure the inspiration as it flows. In this way the creative and analytical processes are separated into two or more distinct individual brains. The song bounces back and forth gaining dimension, richness, and structure. Please read Creative Partnerships for smart strategies on how to build your own collaborative songwriting teams.

Remember this. Great music happens when the eternal soul-self is revealed through interacting with the traumas and thrills of being human. If your music is not firmly rooted in your soul experiences of life, it will likely not go down in history as anything worth remembering.

Developing Your Skills:  Find Examples

It's important that you go out and find at least 10 examples of your all time favorite music and write out their phrase-patterns.  If you go through the trouble of performing this exercise, you will experience a crucial "AH HAH" moment, where everything suddenly starts to make sense.  Once this happens your view of the music world will fundamentally shift.

 

Strategic Note: DON'T get involve in building up the full band parts until you have the basic song laid out.

• QUESTIONS:
• WOULD YOU BE COMPELLED TO BUY YOUR OWN MUSIC?
• DOES IT DRIVE YOU TO INSPIRATION EVERY TIME YOU PLAY IT?

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The brain craves to hear the same theme patterns over and over again with brief variations for contrast.

(Please See our Ear-Opening article: Anatomy of a Hit!)

To be a real producer you have to learn to identify each distinct theme and related supporting phrases and build a separate song around each group.

If you have one good line that doesn't fit. Get together with other musicians and throw that line out there, let them take it, add something of their own, and bounce it back to you. Next thing you know a truly hot new song will be the result.

If it still seems like something is missing, just add a bridge and the whole thing should come together nicely.
 

Breaking Down Your Existing Compositions

Let's say that you have some stuff that you genuinely felt INSPIRED to put into music. You know its real, and its good, but you suspect that its not at its full potential.  

What to Do?

Go back through the piece and ONLY grab the lines which are truly awesome. This includes melodies, chord progressions, riffs, and lyrics.

Now take a deep breath and take a leap!

REBUILD the song according to the above pattern strategies in Anatomy of a Hit!  JUST USING the good stuff.

All the rest is just filler that is watering down your hit. Right now its sleeping underneath the extra junk you thought was needed.

Try this process and you will be astounded how a piece of music can come to life. You will be amazed how people want to hear it over and over to the extent that they will just go ahead and buy a copy.

People will come up to you and talk to you about how they love your music, that they heard someplace, even though they never listened to you perform in person.

You will hear over and over that your career is going places and get lots of offers. This is when it pays to know everything on this site – inside and out.

As you know, we recommend avoiding standard music recording contracts.

To understand how smart artists are going big in today's market please read our article called The New Way to go BIG!

At this point you might also want to know the process of Selling Songs to Big Names.

Here's the typical situation. You find your music starting to make waves. Maybe just locally: but you are starting to get attention. Your manager makes some calls and important people start showing up at your gigs. The thrill of fame and fortune seem to be knocking at your door.

There is a change of energy in the air. Next thing you know: your band is on a airplane flying to New York. You get to play in front of some big label execs. How exciting!! Isn't this what every musician DREAMS of?? Or is it the beginning of a nightmare.

The Cold Side of the Dream

In the music business it takes a LOT of money to go big. Beyond the cost of manufacturing product and putting it on the shelves – there are promotional costs. You didn't think people get on the radio and MTV for free did you??

Launching an artist into the mainstream can easily run $2 million! If it was YOUR money: would you bet that much on a property that doesn't already have huge demand to back it up?

What if you also knew that 95% of new artists can't bring in enough revenues to recoup that initial investment.

How the Big Guys REALLY Make their Money

Here's an important truth. Music industry money isn't really made off of record sales: the REAL MONEY is in publisher's royalties.

KEY POINT: There is a difference between a song and a recording. The ownership of a song belongs to the writer. But someone else might record that song. Publishers invest in the ownership of SONGS.

How does it work? American Radio bills out millions of dollars in ad sales every week. A portion of this income must be divided up among the owners of the SONGS that are played on the radio. The recording artists get none of this income unless they also own the songs.

Organizations such as ASCAP and BMI handle the collection and disbursement of song income. So back to our original question. Why would a record company want to lock a musician into a contract – if going all the way was almost certain to lose money??

What if you already had put millions of dollars into your existing artists? You might want to pro actively keep new talent from diluting your investment.

Answer 1: By acquiring rights and options on new artists: the music industry is able to protect it's existing investment by keeping new properties from diluting the existing catalog of recorded material. In other words it often makes good business sense NOT to divide up the royalty pie.

Answer 2: By preventing other labels from getting their hands on hot new talent – big music business players are able to reduce competition for market-share on their own current artist investments.

Basically the dinners, the fancy suits, and the limo rides are often just a show to persuade you to let them acquire your rights – and put them on the shelf. Honestly: that's about the end of your recording career in most situations.

Deal With the Devil – How Options Lock You In

The scariest part of a big record deal is that the musician loses the right to use their own likeness. This means that you no longer own "you". Your image can't appear on albums, posters, and possibly the web, along with severe restrictions on your appearances in other forms of media: including live performances.

Recording contracts usually have a one-year term for the first album to be recorded and released.

BAD NEWS: Your album may be released – But what if nobody knows about it?? Releasing an album and actually promoting it are two separate animals. ( Read the article called The (NO) Airplay Opportunity to understand what we are talking about here.)

The contract will have a number of options that the record company can use to activate the second contract period, the third contract period etc. If your first experience was negative and you would rather not do another one, there is no way to get out of the contract. The label simply terminates the agreement, but the lock-out clause prevents re-recording of the material! Even if the record label has no interest in your music, they own all the recordings. There is no way to re-release an album on your own.

For a full break down of recording contracts and options visit – How Stuff Works.

Honest Questions to Ask Your Self

1. Does your music resonate with a such a WIDE market: right now - that you need the massive corporate music machine to handle your promotion and distribution?  If this is the case: read A Better Way to Go Big.

2. What is more important to you? Fame? or Making music ( and possibly a living doing so ) ?

3. If fame and exposure are your immediate priority: to what extent are you willing to risk your rights to perform and earn money from your own music?

4. Would you rather earn fifty cents per album (this is the typical big-music cut to the artist) – most contract recording artists never see this because it's totally consumed in advance, by managers and "expenses". ….Or would you rather bring in somewhere between $2 and $10 per album – this is what most independent musicians average in profit per sale.

5. Will you relentlessly pursue fame and fortune like so many other astoundingly talented people who moved to Hollywood and ended up being studio musicians with a day job. Or will you make it happen for your self. Will you create the personal freedom to make the music you were born for?

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A performer who I worked with was talented vocally, as well as on sax and guitar. He would show up at local shopping centers and play his own style of fusion jazz to the office lunch crowd and weekend shoppers. He simply pulled the backing tracks from his albums and streamed them from an MP3 player into a single powered speaker. He then joined in with his instrumental solos, and vocals. Occasionally he invited a bongo player to sit with him and add a little extra personality to the performance. A couple of times the mall management would ask him to turn it down a bit. But that didn't discourage him! On weekends when he played by himself he would typically sell between $400-$600 dollars worth of CDs in 3 hours. If his guest percussionist joined in, it would jump to almost a thousand dollars. His guest musician was happy to get an extra $60 and have fun at the same time! Occasionally he would also hire one of the cute girls who followed him around to handle the sales table. ( If you try this make sure she is friendly – not stuck up. This makes a BIG difference! ) Lunch hour performances brought him about $150-$300. He also liked to provide entertainment at large format record stores in the bigger malls. They put his product right out in front and rung it up at the register.

Another Performer that I read about provides live entertainment at dance clubs. He's a one man band who follows a similar strategy of pre-recording his backing tracks. The club pays him for providing something special compared to the others which only offer canned dance music – in addition club goers crowd around to buy his CDs between sets.

In Hollywood I attended a VIP cellphone product roll out party. The promoters booked a couple of musical acts to set the tone: including a solo DJ-drummer who spun the records and joined with his innovative drum action.

Another time I was walking on the weekend at a crowded outdoor shopping center where literally 20 different musical acts compete for attention. I actually bought a CD from an extremely talented classical guitarist. The cost was about $12. These were units he duplicated himself at home. Even in such a venue with lots of other competitors he was able to turn $180 with just 15 sales!

What Does it Take? In order to create a modest part-time income of $60,000 per year you must perform 3-4 times per week and sell an average of 20 to 40 CD's at each performance for about $10-$12 each. If you will read our analysis called Your Own CD Factory, you will start to understand just how lucrative this little venture can become. This does not include additional revenue from web sales that result from word of mouth and friends sharing your music with other friends. It also doesn't include payment for your appearances, from venue owners, once your demand and crowd-pulling value starts to grow. Even if you were only to play once every other week, alternating between two favorable locations – you could be well on your way to having a small side business for your music. An average of 10 units sold per event at $12 each – would put an extra $3000 per year into your budget.

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Our favorite starter investment is the Zoom R16 Multi-Track SD Recorder Interface and Controller. It can record all by itself and also upgrades nicely to work with a computer-based recording package such as our recommended Cakewalk Sonar & Ableton Live. A key part of achieving a world class sound is learning to use a condenser mic. Our recommended line of MXL mics, start at just $59.

Best all-round keyboard for performing and production: M-Audio Prokeyes Sono 88.

Best starting recording solution for guitarists. Line 6 POD Studio UX2.  Package includes a free copy of Ableton Lite to get you started recording on your computer.

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