How to Sell Your Songs to Artists

There has to be a secret that will reveal how to sell your songs to artists signed to major labels, right? How do you sell songs to your favorite recording artists?

Every songwriter has been where you are now. You’ve written a few songs and don’t want them to languish in a drawer forever. You’re sure at least a couple are hits or at least album cuts. You can easily hear your favorite artists performing them.

Your dilemma: you’re not sure how to get your tunes heard by the “right people”; people who can “do something” with them.

There are two primary ways to market songs.

Hands down, the most likely music professional to listen to your song is through a song publisher. Most song publishers these days don’t publish sheet music, their business has evolved. Most now function as agents for songs and songwriters. Their job entails adding songs to their company roster then promoting them.

If a music publisher accepts your song into their catalog they’ll assume the job of pitching it (playing the song) to their contacts for possible first release, usually under a “single song contract” they’ll sign with you for each song they accept.

If sufficiently impressed with your work perhaps they’ll offer you what amounts to a development deal: a staff writer position paying you a salary in return for a cut of your future royalties.

Now I know what you’re thinking, “But I don’t want to mess around with a middle man, I want The Headless Guitar Godz to record my tune, that’s my favorite group! And their lead singer, Jimmy Heavierthantheheaviestmetal is the best singer on earth, period. I want him to cut my tune, dude, I know it will be a huge!”

Unfortunately, if you have no track record of hits and you aren’t Jimmy Heavierthantheheaviestmetal’s cousin or best friend, it will be very, very difficult to get anyone in The Headless Guitar Godz or anyone even remotely associated with them to listen, let alone record your song.

Don’t they want hit songs? Yes, but if they don’t already write their own:

• They know their time is much better spent reviewing pre-screened songs in a publisher’s catalog
• They don’t want to risk a lawsuit from an amateur songwriter if they are rightly or wrongly accused of subliminal or outright song theft. It can cost them nearly as much to defend themselves in a frivolous lawsuit as it does in one that has merit.

That’s why your primary task should be to locate song publishers who publish in the genre(s) you write in.

Another possible avenue to get your songs to the right people is the song tip sheet.

Songwriter’s tip sheets are published these days via e-mail or on a blog and they list acts preparing to record who are looking for songs. The contact point is usually the artist’s producer. The downfall of tip sheets is cost, with most good sheets that publish valid, useable tips running several hundred dollars per year. It may be better to focus on your songwriting and let your music publisher invest in the sheets.

There are other possible paths to song pitching success I’ll deal with in a separate article, but statistically song publishers, tip sheets and tip blogs are a novice songwriter’s most likely route to the big time.