Andy Lykens

Innovating and operating through growth

Search Results for: music industry

Does Your Music Make You Want to Punch Yourself In The Face?

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Expecting success to come quickly is a flaw of mine that most often leads to dejection, giving up, not starting in the first place, or general malaise.

Once I decide to actually go after something – to really give it a shot – if I’m not an immediate success, I’m ready to throw in the towel.

It’s a downward spiral too. The worse I perceive my lack of success, the worse I feel, and the less I want to do that isn’t related to eating lots of sugar.

The myth

Most adults should know that there is no such thing as an overnight success. You probably have realized at this point that instead success is a long, slow climb.

Success in music is no different (other than the climb might be steeper)!

Redefine Success

I remember when I first started pitching songs. It seemed to take forever to land music in a spot with any real consistency.

But I kept at it. And kept looking for patterns.

And started improving.

One of the keys to doing this was to redefine success.

In other words, instead of beating myself up for not hitting a goal, I would adjust that goal. Instead of trying to get songs on a commercial, I would try to get ANY response from someone.

I’d celebrate any response from a brief hello, to a music search to a “get the hell outta here you crazy person!” (luckily I never got one of those).

Feeling good

Once you shift your focus something amazing happens. You start to feel good.

Feeling good helps to give you more energy, work a little more, and try to be better.

Then all of a sudden those little steps you’ve taken add up, and you get a BIG win.

At that point, it’s time to eat cupcakes and dance.

So next time…

When you start to beat yourself up for under-achieving, re-evaluate.

Have you made some small step that you haven’t properly acknowledged?

Your state of mind can sometimes be the only limiting factor in how big of a success you are.

I’d love to hear how you have achieved some small success in the comments!

What Is Music Publishing And How Do Music Publishers License Music?

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Way back when copyright was first getting started in the United States, there was only one way to make your music go viral – through a music publisher selling sheet music.

The daily operations of music publishing have evolved, but their end goal is still the same – tell the story of the songs and get them performed.

Today, they’re responsible for collecting and distributing performance royalties, issuing grand rights, and getting songs used by commercial artists who don’t write their own music.

But music publishers also play a huge part in the music licensing process.

What does a music publisher control?

Music publishers represent or own catalogs of songs.

A song can be represented in any number of ways from recordings and sheet music, to live performances.

When it comes to music sync licensing, it’s technically considered a performance and anyone wanting to use a particular song needs to get a license from the music publisher for use of that song (they also need to seek out the master recording owner, typically a record label, for permission to use the sound recording).

The traditional model

Traditional music publishers were fairly reactive when it came to licensing music in media.

Mostly they would have a number of people (or just one person depending on the size of the company) answering phones and negotiating rates when someone called to request the use of a song.

Once music licensing started to become big business, most music publishers changed their ways (though, not as many as you’d think)!

The current model

Now you’ll find most major music publishers have people who’s job is to maintain a network of clients. They regularly contact music supervisors about new releases, old favorites, or live events that showcase their music in some way. At some companies the music placement staff also have a hand in new catalog signings.

Like record labels, music publishers will also try setting up showcases at ad agencies or conferences where music supervisors may be in attendance. All in the hopes that they will leave enough impression on the right person involved in music placement.

Since publishers typically have a stable of artists and writers, it’s important to do your research before signing a music publishing deal. Be sure to ask the right questions about their music licensing processes, and make sure they’re constantly testing unique ways to get your music licensed.

Why is music sync licensing so important?

Getting your song on TV can result in both a financial windfall and greater sales of your songs.

Songs that are used once, also often get re-licensed as well. In other words, if someone uses your song for an ad campaign, they will license it for a certain amount of time. Once that time expires, the original licensee then needs to pay again (usually at an increased rate) in order to continue airing the commercial without violating copyright law.

In the end, music publishing is a vital part of the music economy and a fantastic way to get exposure, and properly compensated for the use of your songs. Just remember, if you’re considering signing a music publishing deal, remember to consider all the pros and cons and find the right situation for you.

If you liked this post and want a jump-start to making music industry contacts, subscribe to my free newsletter for a free 8-part course on doing just that!

How To Determine The Value Of Music Licensing Exposure On MTV

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This post was originally published via my newsletter, where my newest material always gets sent months before it appears on this blog. Click here to subscribe to my music licensing newsletter.

Musicians are often asked to trade dollars for ears and told how great the exposure will be. Whether it be a live performance, a synchronization usage, or simply giving away CDs at a gig you will constantly be confronted with opportunity paid only by a promised quantity of listeners.

What’s interesting about this predicament is how set most people are in giving their opinion. You’ll hear things from “never play for free!” to “give it all away!” In the end, it boils down to a simple choice – but these choices are often made under pressure or time constraints.

It’s key to think about these sorts of business decisions before they even arise. This way you can be equipped to answer them under pressure, or at least know enough to ask the right questions. In this way, you’ll have enough information to make the right choice for you.

So how do we value exposure?

Well, it goes back to a bunch of other topics I’ve written on – specifically goal setting. If you have your key goals in mind you’ll be able to make the most of ‘exposure’ opportunities.

Let’s take a look at just one instance of value vs. exposure on TV

Many placement companies will make a list of placements and a lot of the shows on that list will be MTV. Have you watched an MTV show recently? How many songs get played during any given show? How are you to differentiate one song from the next?

Generally MTV pays very, very little money for the music they use (sometimes they pay nothing at all) but then touts how great it is to get music on MTV and they put a track list up on a website after the program airs.

This CAN be good exposure but think about this:

If a potential new fan is watching television and hears a new song they like, will they go through the process to seek it out online, listen through the various songs used in the episode, find the song, google the band, and go to their website to sign up for their mailing list or go to iTunes to download their song?

The answer is – they might! But this is a long and fairly tedious process to acquire a single song that they’ll most likely forget about if they don’t IMMEDIATELY take action upon hearing it on the show. Yikes!

Now look, I’m not saying to not take a placement on MTV, but what I am saying is you need to consider what you might get out of it. So let’s give it a try, shall we?

I went on the MTV website and here was my process:

  1. Go to MTV.com
  2. Find the show I pretended I was watching (in this case I just chose 16 and Pregnant – nice’n’wholesome).
  3. Here’s what I immediately see:

  4. I’m not sure which song it was, so I’ve got to try and nail it down by clicking on each artist (I’m pretending it wasn’t the ‘feature’ song).
  5. Alright, now I see the following:
  6. After listening through the track list, I finally find the song I liked. My options are to buy it (on Rhapsody!), or check out the info and bio for the artist. Here’s what I see for the artist page:
  7. The artist page is a joke. No link to the artist website, no bio, so now if I want to find out more about the artist, live dates, or if the artist is trying to funnel me to their mailing list I’d have to specifically google her and hopefully she’ll show up and I’ll be pointed in the right direction. And finally, buying the track from Rhapsody? Are you serious? When you think of where to buy digital music, is Rhapsody the first name that pops into your head?

Sheesh – lots of work involved for the fan. How many opportunities does a new listener have to get fed up or bored with this process before they find your song? Furthermore, I did this on a laptop, what if the person is using an iPad or an iPhone? How great is this ‘exposure’? What kinds of questions might you ask if you’re given a proposition like this one?

Remember: have your specific goals in mind, weigh the opportunity as carefully as time allows, and do your homework BEFORE the situation arises!

If you’ve licensed a song on MTV yourself or through a service, I’d love to hear about that experience and how it turned out for you. Leave a note in the comments and fill other readers in on your experience!

Low Hanging Fruit in the Music Business: Leap-Frog Cold Calls And Get Noticed By Music Supervisors

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Before we get started, if you’re new to the blog you can read Part 1 of the Low Hanging Fruit series about getting music licensing or other music opportunities here. When you’re done with that, hit up part 2 here to learn how to make key music licensing contacts. If you’re done with one and two, strap in! We’re going to cover how to rapidly make connections with people who can actually help you in your career.

When you’re engaged in a conversation with someone – friend, stranger, or enemy – it’s key to have some triggers set up mentally. These triggers will act as stimulus for you to ask leading questions to help bring you closer to generating a genuine connection with someone that can help you. For instance, if I’m talking to a new acquaintance or stranger, the topic of “what do you do?” inevitably comes up.

In the last email, we talked a bit about how to respond to this question (you can tweak those phrases a lot to really behoove you, but I’ll cover that in a future email). Once a conversation is rolling, here are some key phrases to listen for (they should be blatantly obvious):

  • Advertising
  • TV
  • Film
  • A&R
  • Record Label
  • Publishing
  • A Brand

These triggers are probably already setup in your head and if you meet someone that works in these areas or knows someone in these areas, you obviously would like to dig without sounding greedy or pushy. Ideally, you’ll setup some form of informative conversation where you’re not taking too much time from the other person and make it REALLY easy for them to help you out.

When you hear any of the above, here is a string of questions you can use to try and find out if you can get connected:

1. Which company do they/you work for? This is an obvious one but even having the name of a company means you can at the very least go home and research it online. For instance, if someone works for a brand, even a local one, you can see if they’ve done any sort of media with music under it.

Example: Griffin Technology is a well-known brand. If you live in Nashville, TN this means that you may have a connection to the company. Their website is easy enough to find, and if you head over to YouTube, you can see they’ve posted content that has music under it (check it out here).

2. What do they do for the company? Another obvious question and to be honest, the answer doesn’t really matter. This conversation is all about connecting with someone who is willing to help you. If they happen to work in the mail room or are the CEO, someone willing to help you is more valuable than where they lay on the food chain (you will also find that people who are willing to help others are often higher on the food chain anyway).

3. How do they/you like it there? This question is great because you’ll almost always be interested in the answer. People really open up when they talk about what their work life is. Also, they can leave clues here if they’re struggling in accomplishing a task or project. You never know, that could be something you can help them with.

4. What are they/you working on right now? A heavy hitter. Here again you’re giving the person a chance to talk about what they’re doing and to see if you can help. If you’re talking to a connection, here’s where they may not know. That’s fine but if it’s the case you can follow up with “I would love to sit down and chat with X about what they’re doing.”

As you can probably tell, these questions are great and they’ll help you start a natural dialog. Even with people you may have little in common with, you may just find out something interesting about what they do. Here’s where what we talked about in part 2 comes in handy – always saying yes. Keep your eyes open for ANY opportunity through the natural dialog above will help you help more people.

Next it’s good to know some job titles because ultimately we’d like to get our music on TV (or published or what have you), wouldn’t we? So when you hear these job titles, or phrases, get real curious and see if you can’t fix yourself up with a meeting by drilling down with the questions above:

Producer
– Producers exist in music, TV, advertising, still photography, and much more. Generally being a producer means being responsible for over-seeing a project and helping facilitate the various logistics.

Art Buyer
– Ad agencies have art buyers to, duh, buy art. That includes ANY sort of art including music. And because music and picture so often go hand-in-hand, these folks can be great to get to know. Even if they don’t do anything with music, they will know who does.

Creative Director
– At an agency, creative directors are responsible for the overall creative vision for a brand. They oversee and conceive of major creative ideas for commercials, packaging, and any place where you’d see some sort of brand execution. Obviously they are key decision makers and are great to know or meet.

Copywriter
– These folks write the verbage for whatever brand they’re working on. Whether it’s a commercial script or a print ad. Sometimes they’ll be tasked with coming with lyrics for custom music as well.

Director
– An obvious one, these guys are responsible for the overall vision of a video project for either film, video, commercials or music videos.

Publishing
– Generally speaking people at music publishers can do any number of jobs – the good news is they’ll typically know who to talk to if they’re not it!

Record Label
– Another obvious one. Same as publishing above.

Line Producer
– Line Producers are tasked with budgeting on a given production. For this reason they interface with all departments and know how much money they have to spend on any given piece…like music!

Any of the above with the word “associate” in front of it, or “coordinator” behind it.
– Generally speaking these folks are going to be pretty new to their industry, or to the company they work at. They’re great to get to know because they can move up very quickly but are also receptive to things like free show tickets and album downloads.

These are just a few of the many types of names and titles at production companies, ad agencies, music companies, and people in the film world. However, having a good idea of the TYPES of jobs available at these companies, combined with a few simple questions, you can really set yourself down a path to making solid, real connections quickly.

It’s also important to remember what I said in a previous article: you’re not looking to solve your ultimate goal, you just want to meet and talk about what they do and see where it leads. The very worst that can happen is they can’t help you directly but you end up with a new friend or contact. It’s important to keep that in mind because literally ANYONE can be a fan.

Action Step: It’s time to prepare yourself for conversation. First, do a Google search for any music companies, ad agencies, production companies, or other entities in your city (or in the one nearest by) you’d like to contact. Take a look at their “about us” or info pages and look for any relevant material like video with music underneath it. Then do the following:

Email 15-20 of your friends individually (personalized messages)
Ask if they know someone who works for one of your target companies
If so, ask them if they’ll connect you to that person, and see if you can all grab a coffee together sometime.
If not, tell them to keep their ears open and that you’re looking for music connections based on what you found doing research on the company.

I hope you’ve found The Low Hanging Fruit Series useful. I’m working on my next batch of emails so stay tuned for more music business strategy (including how to put your best foot forward when pitching your music to a contact) and if you need to subscribe, click here!

Low Hanging Fruit in the Music Business: Part I – Find Opportunity Anywhere

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The how to be the first thing to spring to mind when a contact thinks about music.

What is low hanging fruit?

Low Hanging Fruit is a sales concept which means that we need to be sure we’re capitalizing on the opportunities in the places where the fruit is ripe, and easy to pick.

While the metaphor is obvious it exists for a reason: we often get so focused on some large, grandiose plan that we tend to miss out on the easy-wins that surround us everyday…or we get so paralyzed and distracted that

This is especially true in the music industry and getting music licensed. Yes, it’s insanely competitive. Yes, there is a TON of specialty knowledge to learn. Yes, there are a LOT of things you “need” to do.

So we focus on major projects or outreach looking for that big score – music in a commercial, a music publishing deal, some mega-artist recording our song…

But what would we see if we looked for the low-hanging fruit first?

Where do we find it?

Friends, colleagues, and aquaintances. That’s where. Maybe relatives sometimes too.

“But I don’t have any friends in the music business.”

Shut up and stop being dumb. You don’t HAVE to have friends directly involved in the music industry. In fact, it’s probably better if you don’t since the music industry is a complete shit show right now anyway.

Capitalizing on the opportunities that are around you everyday will involve people that work for an entity that simply uses music. There are obvious ones like ad agencies and production companies, but it could also be less obvious like a dog food company, a car dealership, or even a school.

Being tuned in to what your friends are talking about, getting interested, and simply talking about what you do is the next HUGE step you need to take. Once you do that, you’re on way to being able to genuinely help them while applying those skills and traits we mentioned before.

Now pay attention because this next bit is SUPER important:

Low-hanging fruit will scarcely be a 1-step process

Think about that. It means that when you talk to a friend or connection, you realistically cannot expect that because of one conversation all of your dreams will come true. Instead, you should expect that it leads to ONLY ONE MORE step toward uncovering an opportunity to exploit your music.

Yeah, yeah, that isn’t sexy and it certainly isn’t what people want to hear. Tough cookies. Take a look at the goals you created from the last email. How many of those can you instantly achieve in one fell swoop? Probably none. But the nice thing is there is good news about this too:

It also means that you don’t need to know someone super important to take a step in the right direction with your music career.

You may not know anyone directly in the music industry, but I bet there’s a great chance that you know someone who knows someone that can use your skills. Or who knows someone who knows of a conference or event where you can meet people to start making real strides.

What does this really mean though? That you need to be some sleezy, sales-y, douche-bag handing out business cards and CDs to any and everyone you meet? Excuse me while I puke.

No, quite the opposite (this is why your friends are great contacts – they’ll make funny faces or throw bagels at you if you’re being creepy and weird). You can never look ahead into the future to see where things may lead. So, even if you think your friends don’t know anyone it’s important to just talk about what you’re up to as far as music goes. Then, if they ever hear of someone needing a musician or song or something related to music, they immediately think “oh wait, my good friend can help!”

Now we start taking action. Here’s what I’d like you to do to start practice this technique, do it now:

  1. Make a list of friends, co-workers, and aquaintances you can start talking to about your current music projects.
  2. Next, make a list of skills or tools you have that pertain to music.
  3. Now, next to each friend’s name, see if you can come up with 1 or 2 things they may not know that you do.

*note: if you’ve only mentioned something to someone one or two times in the past, they don’t know you do it. Trust me.

The next time you see anyone from your list above, try and work just one of those things into the natural conversation. Maybe you have a live show coming up, maybe you love making playlists for peoples’ parties, or maybe you have an in at a studio. Whatever it is, just be concious of that one thing the next time you see that one person.

So now we’ve honed in on our skills and goals, and we’ve started integrating those skills into conversations with friends. The journey continues! Do you feel like a hobbit? That’s too bad cause I’m dressed like Gandalf today.

3 Must-Know Music Licensing Contract Points

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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!