By the way, Nashville is the smallest big city in the world. What I mean by that is - in a small town it's not what you know it's who you know and everybody knows everybody. To some extent Nashville is like that, but from my experiences, the music business and industry people are exactly like that. They want to deal with people they know and already have a relationship with. That's why it's so hard for new songwriters to reach publishers and record labels.

My advice is this — get to know somebody on the inside of a label or publishing company, even if it's a secretary. One way to do this is if you're an artist/songwriter is to search people's occupations through MySpace. I typed in Publishing Company in the networking search window and landed all kinds of connections. From entry level execs to creative directors. Now these people at least have a knowledge of who I am and what I have to offer as a songwriter.

Making contacts is the easy part. Establishing lasting relationships with these industry insiders is the hard part.

I wish all lots of luck!

THE Songwriter