Our pitch to publisher webinar recently reminded me of several points that I think bear bringing up every now and then. Almost everyone involved in the song submitting process behaved professionally. One or two did not. One of those people e-mailed me after the event claiming that I must not have listened to their songs because they submitted two songs that were better than anything that was played. They went on to say that they would hate to have my job because they could not stomach passing over great songs and playing weak songs that were more commercial instead. I am pretty forgiving, and I have very thick skin, but I want to remind everyone that doing something like that with a publisher or other industry professional will mean the end of your relationship with that person. I have seen it happen. 
My first publisher was the most kind, generous person. He would spend time with anyone off the street that came in my office. And he would bend over backwards to help them. ​

Who would want to say this? An artist is a brand. If a song doesn’t fit their brand, they aren’t going to sing it, no matter how good the song might be. If you can come up with a handful of artists that might think your song fits their brand, you are on the right track. If you can’t, you probably aren’t writing a commercial idea. For instance, I once wrote an amazing song about a boy catching his father cheating on his mom. It was a GREAT song. The only problem was, no one wants to stand on a stage and call his or her father a cheater in front of 60,000 people every night. The audience would believe that it was true. That’s not going to happen. Asking myself “Who would want to say this?” would have saved me some disappointment.

​How does this make the artist look? If you are not painting the artist in a positive light, you have almost no chance of getting a song recorded. 

​One of the biggest mistakes I see aspiring writers make is that of overlooking their peers. When we are trying to get things going with our writing, too many of us are so busy looking up that we forget to look around. There are people at your level right now that are easily accessible to you who will be the biggest writers in town someday. If you spend all of your time trying to set up co-write with writers higher up the ladder from you, you will walk right by these people. And, in walking right by them, you will seal your fate. When they do become successful, they will remember that you didn’t have time for them when they had nothing going on. 

​​My first publisher was a writer as well. He had written with a young artist who was working days selling boots down on Broadway and writing at night. This artist had been turned down by every label in town. He had nothing going on. Still, my publisher believed in him and wrote with him when no one else would.

Looking at the songwriters whom I am mentoring, and the messages and emails I receive all the time, I can say as an average, the biggest question most aspiring songwriters have is “Why am I not getting songs recorded by major artists?”
​This is a very hard question to answer because there are many factors affecting your process in getting a song, but in my experience, there are several primary reasons people don’t experience the success they want with their songs. Here they are:

Your songs aren’t good enough yet. Well, I always had been saying “write better songs”. That doesn’t mean your songs aren’t good enough, but it means you can write better songs that what your written until this point. Today, you should write a song better than what you wrote yesterday, and tomorrow you should write something better than the song you wrote today. In more than 90% of the cases I’ve encountered, this is the problem. ​