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SHOULD YOU PAY YOUR CO-WRITER TO DEMO YOUR SONG?

10/26/2021

Let’s talk about some co-writing scenarios. Sometime ago, we had a lively and awesome debate in the one of our sessions at Flipside with the young writers about whether or not a “track guy” (Or girl) should charge their co-writers for building a track/demo for their song. There truly no one’s answer is right or wrong to that question. There might be times when that is appropriate, but there are definitely times when it’s highly inappropriate. Let me illustrate some of the complex situations that occur in my writing and let you weigh in on the answer to that question.

Hit Writer/Staff Writer Track Guy. One guy I write with has had a number of hits and lots of cuts. He’s a great “track guy”. He has produced songs on some major label artists. He has a publisher, but they don’t have an office in Singapore, so we work together whenever they need to get anything done here and we let them to use our Flipside’s office and recording studio.

They are great with sync and pop pitches, but not really a player at all when pitching film music – which is my specialty in composing and in my heart, it is my personal preference to compose film music more than anything else. So, this writer and I wrote what we thought was a great pitch for one of major artists. I spent about an hour and a half the morning of our write working on ideas and found a great one that we used. I came in with it all mapped out and part of a chorus. We quickly wrote the song. Two days later, he sent me a demo. I got it pitched to that singer we had in mind and she put it on the hold. If we get it cut, we make the same amount of money since we have similar pub deals. So, what do you think? Should I have paid him to track the song? Should he have paid me to pitch it since we used my connections for pitching and he admitted, “never leaves his basement”? Is a great demo that never gets heard worth anything?

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HOW SONGWRITERS GET PAID?

10/19/2021

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Several people have asked about the different ways for songwriters to get paid. It seems to be a big question for everyone even inside the industry that how one can sit down and write music and make a living out of it! Growing up in Iran, where people appreciate music more than anywhere else I had ever seen, yet nobody wants their children to become musicians, I often had this problem that when anyone was asking me about my job and I was saying that I am a songwriter, their next question was, “No, what is your real job? How do you make money?”. To this date I can say this is one of the most common questions I get. So, here are a few ways for songwriters to get paid.

Publishing Draws for songwriters. This is a monthly amount a publisher pays to a writer that is on a staff publishing deal. This basically is same as any other sort of employment and the writer is being hired by the publisher as a full-time staff, getting paid to write a certain number of songs that would be approved by the publisher.

These are really advancing on royalties that have to be repaid out of incoming royalties. Once your catalog is recouped, the publisher pays you semi-annual royalty checks for money they have collected. This part can be taken as the “bonus” in business world. Basically, the more you write, the bigger your catalog would be, and the bigger your catalog is, the more semi-annual royalties will come to you.

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DISCIPLINES IS A KEY FOR SETTING YOURSELF UP TO SUCCEED

10/12/2021

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One of the biggest lessons I have learned in my years in the music business is that nobody wants me to succeed as much as I do. My publisher, my co-writers and my song pluggers all want me to do well. They are heavily invested in my success. But, at the end of the day, I’m going to have to do most of the heavy lifting if I’m going to succeed. They will help but they will do what they can do, and that’s my job to do “my job”. If they were up to do what I am supposed to, they didn’t need to work with me from the first place. And to do my job, I need to have a very strong discipline coming from myself, because in this industry we don’t really have such thing as “boss” or someone who force us to do anything. Everything, including all success or failures come, are direct reflection and consequences of our own actions. The way I always explain it for my mentees is, “We need to have a military level of discipline, and there is no commander to force us. We have to have it from inside our own will power”. Here are a few things I try to do every day to keep myself moving in the right direction:

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PRESS RELEASE: xs - Save This Love

10/8/2021

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xs is back with a new song Save This Love which is her second single since her debut album Good Girls Don't Speak Their Minds.

Written by xs and Hangi Tavakoli and produced by Hangi Tavakoli, Save This Love has an acoustic instrumentation, heavily relying on guitars and supported by distorted 808 drums, accompanied by a complicated yet simple vocals and adlips arrangement. It gives a chill vibes and listeners walk away with a warm feeling in their hearts.

In the song, xs tries to salvage the romance as she addresses her fault, seeks forgiveness and asks her partner to not give up the relationship.

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HOW TO PITCH YOUR SONGS WISELY OR DON’T BE THAT GUY

10/5/2021

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One of the biggest mistakes I see rising songwriters make is pitching songs improperly. This can ruin everything. When you are pitching songs, there are some little unwritten rules about it that can help you a lot in getting the attention of the publisher, producer or the artist you are pitching to. And not following those rules will tell them you are unprofessional, and you will be in their blacklist – the last place you’d want to be. I want to give you some guidelines to help you pitch songs wisely and to not be that guy/girl that burns bridges by pitching the wrong way. Here are some things to consider when pitching.

Follow instructions carefully. If they said, “Don’t pitch any beach songs”, you are better off not pitching one, even if you think yours is great. Pay close attention to what they have already and don’t pitch that. If you don’t care about what they need, why do you think they need to care about what you are pitching? These people are some of the busiest people in the industry.

You cannot expect them to open your song and listen to it while it is irrelevant to what are searching for something else. This action will have no result other than you, shouting to them that you are unprofessional and basically asking them to put you in the blacklist and never to open your emails again.

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SHOULD YOU PAY YOUR CO-WRITER TO DEMO YOUR SONG?

HOW SONGWRITERS GET PAID?

DISCIPLINES IS A KEY FOR SETTING YOURSELF UP TO SUCCEED

PRESS RELEASE: xs - Save This Love

HOW TO PITCH YOUR SONGS WISELY OR DON’T BE THAT GUY

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