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Commercial Songwriting
kompoz.com/site/commercialsongwriting
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Usually this means getting an established artist to record your songs. This can be done by contacting the artist directly with demos, sending demos to record companies, and finding an agent. I met quite a few people like this in LA years ago who were making good money doing this. Often people target a particular artist or an up and coming clone of that artist and try and write something suited to them, then try and contact that artist and build a relationship. There also used to be regular meetings in LA where songwriters would meet up with record company executives and they would place demos on a wheel, spin it, and listen to some randomly selected this way.
I also went to some songwriting classes in LA with a guy who at the time had a song of his in the top 10 sung by Al Jarreau, and he was 70 years old. He had also written a song on a Steve Miller Band record. There was another class by the lady who wrote "that ain't no way to treat a lady". Dianne Warren also used to do classes, she wrote "we built this city on rock and roll" as well as many of the hits for Whitney Houston. There also used to be a magazine for professional songwriters called "Songwriting" published by the Songwriter's Guild.
I also met a girl who claimed she wrote a number one song for Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians called "what I am is what I am", though she wasn't a performer herself. She would have made a fortune from that. I'm sure other Kompoz members have stories like this. I was also told it is common for artists to buy a song outright so they could claim they wrote it, Mick Jagger did this on at least one occasion.
So people are out there making money from songwriting, this group is for exploring ways to do that in a professional way. I think Kompoz should have a group like this because with so many members the odds are many people want to do this for a living. There is also a lot of talent on Kompoz, there are often better songs here than on the radio, and so it is quite possible some here could be commercially successful.
Here are some possible aims for the group:
1. Publish here articles on professional songwriting.
2. Critique member's songs from the point of view of commercial potential.
3. Suggest ways to contact artists.
4. Share stories about having tried commercial songwriting.
5. Kollaborate on particular styles of songs with commercial potential.
6. Looking for the latest fashions in commercial music to try and write for.
7. Explore fields such as movie and TV soundtracks, advertising jingles, and writing ringtones for phones.
8. Finding video artists to Kollaborate with, finding up and coming movie directors and try and write soundtracks for their work, finding people who make videos for songs commercially and make partnerships. From my experiences I think the people who succeeded in this were ones who took the idea of a songwriting career seriously and tried to write as professionally as they could. There are a lot of songwriters but not many who think of it as a profession, so the competition is not as strong as you would think. Most songwriters also want to perform their own work and aren't interested in writing for other artists, so that reduces the competition even further.It doesn't matter what you look like, how old you are or how well you perform live, it matters most if you can write what modern artists and audiences want.
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