Who Cares About Songwriters?

[john]

Hey

A lot has changed in the world of songwriting in recent years. Older contracts don't favor songwriters as the main revenue stream is based on sale... and record labels and artists are moving more towards the revenue from live performances... that might serve the artist and label well, but where does that leave the songwriter? The songwriter does get a performance royalty, but where the label and artist make more from higher concert fees and merchandise the songwriter does not.... unless specified in their contract. Clauses that address this are to an extent being added to contracts but the fact remains that the songwriter is being squeezed.

People seem to care about artists, care about songs, and the supposed justification of illegal downloads being that they would break labels... sure they killed off lots of small indie labels (the ones they weren't targeting), but the major labels have still found a way to get their pound of flesh. Major artists too seem to have been weathering the storm pretty well too... meanwhile songwriters and indie artists are generally eating the dirt from their back yard.

So illegal downloads are here to stay. High cost merchandise and concert tickets are here to stay... although I am sure illegal merchandising could just as easily kill off that revenue stream too.

So where does that leave songwriters? I guess I should also include indie labels and indie artists too.

If you have an opinion, proposed solution, information... whatever... I'd like to hear what you think on the subject...

Cheers

John

[john]

answer... No one! LOL

[FinnArild]

It's a Good Thing , John.

[john]

it is? how so?

[musicthom]

I think that like a lot of industries there are some who seem to benifit more than others, just like the artists who don't write their own material as you say concert revenue and of course endorsements/sponsor deals is where the real money is

they way it is looked at in my opinion is that the record company's only see a song as a product its how they market it that brings them the money

[Sadie]

I would have to agree music labels are not exactly looking for songwriters, they are looking for someone who has a good image and can make them a lot of money. However, there are a couple of young artists out there, for example, Colbie Calliat and Taylor Swift, who are writing and singing their own songs. I have always preferred artists who write their own material. It just seems to make them more personable and relateable. I do hope in the future that the business shifts back in favor of the singer songwriter.

[ChrisA]

I've been into Simon Cowell's office. (long story, but I have a mate with an indie label who liased with someone at BMG and needed to do some very brief business with Cowell).

In his office, Simon has shelf after shelf of CDR's containing unsolicited and unheard 'pop' songs. He estimated that there were easily around 5000. All of these songs - he believed, were formularic enough to become hit records. He could essentially pull any CD off the shelf at random, send it down to the studio to re - produce with a more 'now' feel,and hey, a hit.

His attitude was that 'all the songwriting has already been done'.

The guy's a philistine - obviously, BUT ...he's a power player in the pop market, and it seems he has it sewn up for the near future at least.

[MikeRobinson]

Tom Watson, Sr, the founder of IBM Corporation, used the following little example with his salespeople:

"Two shoe salesmen were sent to Pango Pango to explore business opportunities there. Both of them immediately wired back:

COMING HOME NEXT BOAT X NO ONE HERE WEARS SHOES XX

and...

GRAND OPPORTUNITY X SEND ALL YOU HAVE X NO ONE HERE WEARS SHOES XX

You bet: "it's a pithy point." (But it was written for salesmen, remember...)

There have always been many kinds of writers serving many kinds of markets. I still remember, and I still miss, Grit magazine. No one can argue with the success of the supermarket tabloids. Being a soap-opera star is, well, "steady work in Hollywood," which I guess is rare.

The folks who have their "band in a box" songs and "writer in a box" software (no doubt... and yes, I am "being cynical" here, not actually smashing product-pumpkins) will always have a market for their work. Maybe they don't need writers at all. But have you actually listened to their stuff? Would you want to? Go ahead... name one actual tune by Britney Spears. Hum a few bars. I can't. I don't want to. That's not my music. These folks might have at one time been in a position to be so smug, but the tide goes in and the tide goes out. "The water makes dry land." (Hmm... that sounds like a song...)

But of this we can be sure: no matter what kind of taste in music we like, there are millions of other people out there just like us, and we are all connected now. For the very first time in all of human history. "We live in interesting times." Probably the most interesting times of any generation that has ever yet lived... period.

Former business models simply do not apply. It is no longer a model where "you find them." In a real sense, "they find you." Just as you, when "you" are "they," seek and find.

And the true shape of the market now? Well, "no one here wears shoes." Here's a pencil. You write the next line.

Edited March 2, 2010 by MikeRobinson

[bluage]

Alright, okay, that tears it! I've had it up to "here" with all the cracks about "Band-in-a-Box"! Why, I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll BLOW YOUR MANUSCRIPT PAPER DOWN!!! (smile, laugh, guffaw!)

Seriously, my es-steamed (pun intended) fellow songwriters. "Band-in-a-Box" is just a tool. Honest! That's all it is. I use it all the time to develop my songs from scratch. In fact, you really can't get anything useful out of the program if you don't know something about music theory, like chord progressions for starters. The only "shortcut" provided is the automatic musical accompaniment, which only serves to allow you to hear your song with various instruments performing along with your chord changes.

If I had the money and the time to hire actual musicians to play my music...I'd still use "Band-in-a-Box" because I believe the musicians would benefit as much from hearing the software's musical accompaniment as by reading the notated music on paper. If you haven't given it a try, I really think you should, or at least seek out others who use it and consider their opinions. If you work on getting the "right" chords and progressions, the result will cause your jaw to drop, 'specially if it's already broken! (smile!).

Lately, P.G. Music, the manufacturer, has introduced a concept called "Real Tracks" and "Real Drums", which are digitized audio snippets of actual musicians playing real musical instruments. The program developers have found a way to cause the recorded performance(s) to actually follow your key and chord changes, and I mean seamlessly, ladies and gents! People who have heard my songs have occasionally believed that they were listening to actual musicians. "A computer made that?! Get outta here!"

As you can see I'm pretty ecstatic about "Band-in-a-Box", but it's only because I got started in music very late in my life, and having such a wonderful tool to compose music with has been a true godsend for me. It's shortening my learning curve because I can hear the result of what I'm learning about music theory instantly, so its educational value to me has been darn near indispensable.

Well, that's enough, already, eh? I gotta call my sponsors at P.G. Music and tell 'em to mail me another check for promoting their product...!

bubbling bluage

P.S. I...I..(quit stalling, already, man. Confess!) Okay, okay...I, uh...I use Microsoft Songsmith, too! Moo-hah-hah-hah! (Hat's off to Mr. Moxey for the "Moo-hah-hah-ha" bit!)

[MikeRobinson]

Alright, okay, that tears it! I've had it up to "here" with all the cracks about "Band-in-a-Box"! Why, I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll BLOW YOUR MANUSCRIPT PAPER DOWN!!! (smile, laugh, guffaw!)

Peace! That's why I tried to say that I wasn't slamming the product.

As it has been said, "computers can't do music for you, but they certainly help." There is a lot of the process of arranging and even writing a song that, I can see, are well-defined enough that a computer could reasonably and usefully help you do them. And so, without further ado, I'd say... "that's what a digital computer is for." I would no more want to do music without computer assistance (now...), than I would want to use a typewriter to write papers. Now that the tools exist, let us use them (and improve them). "A million monkeys," digital or no, still won't write Shakespeare.

[Lazz]

I've had it up to "here" with all the cracks about "Band-in-a-Box"!.......... "Band-in-a-Box" is just a tool. Honest!

Me too.

I think the reason for most of the cracks comes from the fact that folk who otherwise couldn’t really play a lick can use the package to make something that sounds half-way decent. But I wouldn’t go blaming the package for the fact it has unintended side-benefits for people who can’t really play. It was never meant to be that kind of tool. That’s not at all the reason why it was designed and developed.

The initial raison d’être was to make a more sophisticated practice tool for jazzers.

That's it.

In days B.C. (before computers), everyone from the novice on up to Michael Brecker, for instance, used the Jamie Aebersold Play-A-Long LPs or Ramon Ricker’s Music-Minus-One series as part of their practice regime. The give you a library of progressions and turnarounds, basic blues and ‘rhythm’ changes in different keys, and a solid bag of tunes from the standard jazz repertoire, with backing from a rhythm section of piano bass and drums. If you were a piano player wanting to practice a tune, you could turn off one of the stereo channels and work-out alongside just the pre-recorded bass and drums.

Occasionally decidedly un-groovy, with those fixed and pre-recorded backings quickly losing any element of supportive surprise, they were nonetheless an essential tool for those occasions when you can’t easily call a bunch of mates round for a blowing session. As I said – every player uses them, from student to pro, so there is a huge market including educational institutions as well as established jobbing musos. They are an accepted and established part of teaching and learning.

Peter Gannon (PG Music) set out to bring that style of journeyman tool into the digital era and make it ‘better’, more groovy and happening, and with loads more practical applications like being able to switch the feel of a standard you may be working on from swing to latin, or the tempo from a medium burn down to a ballad. And, if your bent was towards more decidedly ‘original’ content to your pad, then the real cool innovation was also being able to program your own changes and get it all together with your own material.

PG has a solid musical background – his dad played jazz piano and his brother Ollie, who started playing the instrument only when he was 20, became one of the premier first-call guitarists in Canada – so Peter is very well connected throughout the muso community and pretty much knows everyone. The reason for making note of this is that it enables him to call upon absolutely world-class players to record the music elements used in the program. That’s just another of the things that makes it so good.

Other added bits that came from development and actively listening to their growing customer base now extends its application as a compositional tool and enables us to print off chord charts and horn parts and it allows you to transpose 'em and hear ‘em and check ‘em before hitting that button, as it has also allowed folk who otherwise can’t really play a lick to make a fist of a half-way decent sounding recording.

But I think it’s well worth bearing in mind that BIAB was a practice tool designed by improvising musicians as for improvising musicians.

It does a bleedin' great job at it, too.

The fact that amateurs can use it productively in their bedrooms is also cool.

But that's just an extra small bonus alongside the essentially heuristic intent.

(I'm sure they also care about songwriters)

.

[bluage]

This is the friendliest and most professionally conducted music-oriented website / forum I've ever participated in. Only a month has passed since I joined and already I wish I could meet you folks in person, talk the talk and walk the walk about m-u-u-u-sic...

Hey, all you hep cats an' swingin' sisters! Right 'bout now I'm diggin' the foot-tappin', finger snappin' and oh-so-cool Hammond organ and tenor saxophone soundz of Shirley Scott and Stanley Turrentine blowing a swingin' storm up on the album, "Blue Flames"...

"By-yoobie doo-ba-zop, ah-shoo bop ah-dooie!

Weeeeeee, op shabba doobie yoo-ba baby, ow!"

Uh-oh. My downstairs neighbor is pounding on her ceiling...

bluage

P.S. Sorry about busting up the original topic of this thread!

[traite]

OK

I love reading but hate replying so i'll keep this as brief as possible.

I love songwriting for me. I gig occasionally around Glasgow, Scotland as I work full time. Too me it's a hobby that do not believe will go much further, it's a kind of therapy for me and it saves money having to go to a shrink.

Cowell et all have the biz sowed up for the next few years so lets concentrate on our art. It's just a bugger that the art is being, as some might say dumbed down in some areas but it has also been said that progress demands sacrifice (don't know where I heard that). It will be interesting having this debate in 20 years just to see where the art has taken us, if it exsists at all in the current form.

I know many people in bands and songwriters who have given up trying to make it as it costs them too much time and money. In Glasgow the number of artists of the singer songwriter variety coming up is insane. There are literally hundreds of people who think that they are the next big thing and many of them are damn good but try and get them even an inkling of publicity is impossible.

Personally I blame Jedward. When that is the standard in the UK for pop music then you know we are on a slippery slope to mediocrity.

Does any of this make sense as I have only had 3 coffees and am still half asleep. Answers on a postcard.

[MikeRobinson]

Howzabout the songwriter who doesn't sing?

As for me, I write computer software commercially ... I write text commercially ... maybe someday I can write songs commercially ... ... but don't ask me to sing them! I'd much rather give you a lead sheet, maybe a simple "scratch" arrangement, but a vocal performance from me would not be a pretty thing.

Maybe we should be encouraged, not discouraged, by all that is happening around us. The demand for music is huge ... which is why there's so much out there and somehow it's still selling. People are obviously interested in musical performance, because they buy video games to fantasize about doing it. And a music all about songwriting just won the "Best Actor" and "Best Original Score" Oscars, here in the States.

Somewhere out there, among all that wretched "bubble gum," there must be someone who's gonna blow all our socks off someday. But he or she might not be a "singer + songwriter."

Edited March 8, 2010 by MikeRobinson

[traite]

Somewhere out there, among all that wretched "bubble gum," there must be someone who's gonna blow all our socks off someday. But he or she might not be a "singer + songwriter."