The title of this webinar is How to Pitch Songs and Yourself to the US Music Business. and I, and I hope that these will be tools that you can pitch to any business and for any entity, whether it’s yourself, your songs, your projects, some common themes that we’re gonna kind of go through. So what makes an effective pitch? we’re gonna start, I’m gonna kind of start with some headings that I’m gonna go through in depth. and again, these sound potentially kind of obvious, knowledge, preparation, resources and outreach.
That’s kind of gonna be the basis of, of today’s conversation. I’m gonna break it down a little bit by category. So here’s what might sound the most obvious to you guys, but it’s really important. Know yourself. Who are you as a creator when you are coming into this business? You, you need to, you’re coming in to present a talent, a skillset, a collaborative, a collaborative perspective that you’re gonna bring with others in some cases.
So as you’re getting yourself ready to start pitching, really dig deep into your creative self and work on establishing, developing, defining and bettering what you do. and also how you wanna perceive yourself too. So if you are a top line writer, then that’s how you, you know, that’s how you categorize yourself. Do you wanna learn a different skill?
Do you have a certain strength within that top line? Do you tend to write stronger, stronger verses than choruses? Are you someone who can only write a great middle eight? I’ve actually worked with a lot of different types of writers who, write as a whole, but were really, really excellent at one specific skill. that’s a good place to start. So, you know, identify your skillset and then really start to work at that. and, and, because when you start to press to pitch yourself that asset that you have, if you’re pitching yourself to, even, even before you’re getting to the industry side, if you’re pitching yourself as a collaborator to get into some really great sessions, to, you know, elevate your, your skillset, your resources, as a collaborator, every step of the way, there’s a pitch involved.
So it starts with you really knowing who you are and then working at that skill to make that the best possible you that, that you can deliver.
this is also a time while you’re identifying your, your, your skills and talents to develop those further and to think a little ahead as to what else you can offer. What are you good at? What are you, what can you get better at? And, and how can you make that happen? So all of these sort of creative development, you know, sort of skills are, are, it, it requires a lot of, self-awareness, a lot of honesty, being really clear with yourself to know what you’re good at, to know what you’re not good at, and to try to find ways to get better at all of those, at, at all of those skills.
So, so the result of this is when you really get to that point of feeling very confident, that’s a value, that’s a value for you as a creator. That’s an and that’s an asset, and it allows you to present yourself in the best way possible. When you pitch, it gives you confidence. You know, if you’re not sure if you’re, if you’re getting that one shot to pitch to someone and you’re not really sure that what you’ve got is the best that it can be, it probably isn’t.
And, and you might miss a great opportunity. You might, you might blow a great opportunity because you come into a, an office setting, a zoom call, a zoom meeting, a studio session, you know, without your best assets in hand and, and, and not confident. So, so again, these things sound really obvious, but they’re not always as obvious as, to you yourself. and you have to take a really long, clear and hard look at who you are, what you do, what your assets are, what you offer to a collaboration, to a pitch, you know, to an executive, to a a company.
and we’re gonna talk all about, we’re gonna break that down a little bit, kind of going forward. but you have to start there. You have to really start with knowing yourself as a creative person, being honest with yourself, and, and then working towards improvement, growing being better, one thing than another, working on that other thing or deciding, Hey, you know what?
I’m only really, really good at this one thing, but it’s valuable. That’s value. And knowing and understanding your value is, is, is very important, and it reflects upon you whenever you do a pitch. so those are, those are some things I think are very, just as a, as the baseline starting point important for you guys, to work on. So to that point, let’s talk about the creative. how do you prepare yourself?
So for, for you guys sitting, everybody’s in their homes, you know, everywhere across the, the world basically. Not just, you know, not just one industry, everybody’s, you know, kind of in the same circumstances at the moment. So, this is a, I I’m, you know, we’re all trying to find sort of the silver linings and the, and the, and the opportunities within, within the industry. And I’m gonna talk a little bit about that shortly as well. but for you as a creative person starting out, presumably on your own, what can you do?
So you write the first, you guys are all songwriters in varying capacities, and with different goals, different aspirations. You have a hundred percent control of how much you write, how much time you dedicate to writing, and how, and, and how you, you craft and develop your approach, and your style. Write all the time. You know, if, if you, if you ever research, or read Articles about successful songwriters, you, you, you know, you see someone who’s got a hit song and it’s really easy to say, oh, well, they, they make it look so easy.
It’s not easy. If it was so easy, everyone would be writing hit songs all the time. it’s, it’s a, it’s a skillset you have to develop. And the, the, the first way to do that is to work really hard within yourself to write, as, as often and as consistently as possible. You’re gonna write a lot of bad songs before you get to a good one, and you’re gonna write a lot of good songs before you get to a great one. If you’re lucky enough to be able to be in that moment where you feel you have written something great, it’s, it’s, it’s the result of hard work.
And I think some, and, and sometimes a little bit of luck and good fortune and good timing too. so I, I, I say here, sort of write freestyle, which is what I’ve just, you know, been sort of describing, write on your own, write to anything. I have an artist, I have worked with an artist who used to, she was a really, not a great musician, but a very, very strong lyricist, kind of a poet. She, she would rewrite the lyrics to existing songs. That’s how she started to become a writer.
And, and I, I thought that was really clever at the time. She was 17 when she started to do this. and, and, and I, I found that to be a really interesting way of, of, of developing a craft. and, and, it was very, it was a very successful, her name was, her name was Anna Alex. She had a big hit record in the United States. and I thought that was really clever. if, if you are able to, you can write to targets and briefs, and I’m gonna talk a little bit about that. I’ll talk about it now, for those of you who don’t know what those are.
so targets and briefs, and they may have other terminologies that in, in way in the ways they’re described. They’re basically descriptions of songs that people are looking for. music publishers, I’m sure globally, but certainly in the United States, circulate briefs. There’s somebody in house who creatively comes up with the, the a descriptive paragraph or, or even a couple of sentences of what a specific artist is looking for.
Those briefs are handed out to songwriters who are, you know, part of their companies. Sometimes these are, these are briefs are usually, kind of in-house. and they aren’t necessarily something that you guys would all have access to, but they’re, but they, but there might be, sometimes they send, they send them out to pros, sometimes they send them out to managers to, you know, it depends on how wide the search for a song is, from a music publisher. this can come from a publisher. This can come from a record label who works with an artist who doesn’t write songs.
I’ve seen briefs in my career, over time, you know, for artists like Celine Dion or Rihanna, in all types of musical genres. Also, sometimes for a project, sometimes there’s a compilation project that a label is putting together, and they want specific songs, and they’re gonna have a singer come in and sing them. So there are many different, opportunities to kind of grab hold of some of those briefs and, and write to them. and, and those are really great ways of targeting your skillset, targeting the, you know, how you write to putting your mind into, your mindset into the, the, what you think an artist would want, would wanna sing the mindset of that artist.
it, with, in the times that I’ve worked with songwriters who have been writing for others, they sit around studios and they’re like, what would she think of, you know, what would she wanna sing? And I, I was in a session once where a couple of writers were writing for Carrie Underwood, a country artist.
And she, I think was just, just pregnant, with maybe her first child, I dunno how many she has. and, and the writers were sitting around saying, okay, well what, what must be going through her mind right now? She’s about to be a mom. let’s think about that and let’s come up with some topics and some ideas that we can throw in and, you know, into this mix and, and come up with songs around. So, so, you know, if you’re writing on your own, you can do some research on the artists and where they’re at in their lives and come up with your own briefs.
and, and they’re good, they’re good exercises. if you can’t access existing brief.
Emerging artist, Americas Music Market, How to get into the music business U.S.A, Nashville artists, Song repetoire, Getting a music catalogue heard, Ways to become a professional songwriter, Publishing and A&R expertise
