STOP ASKING THE WORLD TO LISTEN TO YOUR MUSIC AND WRITE SONGS SO GOOD THEY WANT TO HEAR THEM

A few years ago, I urged a popular music forum to start a songwriting thread. The songwriters involved in it thought it was a great idea and I stop in from time to time to discuss writing and read comments. It started out really cool. Discussions about lyrics, melody, popular songs vs. classics, etc. Later on, I stopped in to read up on the discussions. I admit I hadn’t logged on in a few months. And guess what the most popular column on the songwriting thread was? “Post your demos here” 121,000 views & comments in the last 6 months. The closest column about actual “songwriting” in the Songwriting Thread was 718 views!
​
Now understand this was not a site where fans buy music or publishers go to find songs. It was just a forum for songwriters to discuss songwriting and to share their opinions and ideas on this one particular topic and nothing more than that. 

The reason I’m bringing this up, is that there is a myth abound in the writing community generated in large part by social media and technology. This myth is bought by songwriters everywhere. It says, “I already write great songs. I just need to post them on SongCloud, iTunes, Facebook, Reverb Nation, etc, and if I just get enough people to listen to my songs, I can be discovered, recognized, and heard.”
 
But here is the actual truth. Every single songwriter that I know or work with that is getting songs recorded by major artists and impacting the world with their songs, pays little attention to posting their songs and trying to be heard. Very little time! Their real focus is on getting better at their craft and writing better songs. They understand that if they write a great song it will move people. It will open doors to great things. Someone will hear the song, will be moved, will play it for someone else, who then records the songs and the world falls in love with it. Simple as that. What my friends on the songwriting forum don’t understand is this. Instead of pushing our songs to people and try to force them to listen to them, we need to spend that time and energy on improving our own songwriting game and don’t be worried about people to hear it. We all want to be heard and wish our music to affect people around us. But for that to happen as songwriters we must focus on creating something worthy of being heard in the first place, then try to push it. We must wake up each day wanting to improve our writing. Every day to write a song, better than the one we wrote yesterday. Wanting to talk with our comrades about songwriting and create better songs that move the world.

Author

Hangi Tavakoli is our in-house established and professional music producer with more than 18 years of experience in songwriting, music production, mix and mastering. He has produced more than 3,000 and written more than 4,800 published songs to-date, including some major hits in international scale.