JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Industry Message Forum I think I'm ready for a challenge!

I'd like to know how many people here are actually pitching to "movies and commercials". What success have you had? What's the cost? Should there be any cost? Where do you find requests for music with a specific style and specific message? Do you really need a PRO? Ultimately, what's the easiest and most time/cost effective way to seriously pursue this? WHO'S THE ONE TO TALK TO!?!

I spent the last 10 years developing my lyrics into songs and at this point I have basically completed 45-50 of them. Originally I had no idea what I wanted to do with them, other than to create music but I really didn�t give it much thought because I was having way too much fun. As I developed the songs I realized I had a reasonable sized body of work, and growing. I also found that I hadn�t limited my writing to one genre.

In November 2020, I came back onto the JPK site after 15 years absence and have begun to post my songs here. I then began to explore other sites and got more interested in sites such as Taxi which intrigued me. Since I had already had radio play for a couple of my songs, I felt I could produce songs that could make it to air. Working with some one as talented as Jon Hemingway, on my song production, was a blessing over the years. The end result is I have a body of work that IMHO is worth putting out there to see what sticks.

I have now begun to post my songs to a couple of sites and am now pitching them. I will be putting them on other sites as well. I presently have 5 songs out there and have had 1 no so far. It does not bother me to be rejected, I just go to the next pitch on my list and as I wrote in my song �You Will Excel� I just keep looking for that �yes�. As far as sync pitches go, I have not done that yet but expect to do a lot of it in the future, particularly for some of my instrumental tunes.

IMO there should be a cost to have your music reviewed for possible use by anyone, not just sync. It is not a lot of money but it helps to prevent the logjams that occur if pitching is free. I think it will probably cost me around $300- $400 per month (monthly fees and pitching costs) to do this but at my age, 74, I ain�t taking it with me so I�m going to have fun writing, producing and pitching my songs for the rest of my life.

As far as the easiest and most cost effective way to pursue it, I haven�t a clue on that, but that, at least for me, is not something I think about. As I get into this a little deeper, other opportunities will evolve that I can explore.

When it comes to who to talk to, I don�t know, but if I need to find that out, I will and I will contact them.

As an aside, there are some of my songs that I am pitching directly to organizations to see what other possibilities there might be for them.

Steve

Honestly, I don't believe there are any real "opportunities" left. There's 1000nds of classes and seminars where you basically sit through a "pep-talk" and a sales pitch for a book about "how I got lucky" lol, but that's pretty much the sign that the business is dead. I've posed this question before over the years and the answer is always the same, nobody knows... If anybody did, they probably wouldn't tell lol.

Reading this after tracking, asking myself why im doing it....

Yeah, there's always people willing to sell you information on how to do something, but that's why they are selling you the information, it's much easier to do that!

From what i've heard from some folks who have placed on TV and Movies (not many, and not for much money) is that the quality of the recording matters way more than the song. They dont care about the song at all, they are looking for a high quality track to put in their spot. But they also have every song ever released available to them to use, so why would they pick any of ours? Price would be the only reason, If you give them your highest quality recording for free..... you will probaby still not get a song placed...but it's theoretically possible.

I think your best shot of achieving any notice is having a viral hit on youtube with it. Or at least alot of views. From there, it could end up in other things and put you on the map as a songwriter.

But the math is off on two main things. There are thousand times more artists than there are opportunities, and the money it takes, for either home recording gear, and investing in yourself as a producer, or having it recorded is going to far outdo what you can make back with it.

Spend $1,000 on a record quality demo, the odds of ever getting that back are slim.

I've also heard that when music placement people put music together, they research the streaming sites and charts, social media, to see what artists are creating a "buzz", and then they approach them about using their music. So it helps to already have a brand name.

One way might be to become active in indie film making projects. Join the art community.....take some courses here in your community:

https://calhoun.edu/humanities-social-sciences/fine-arts/

Get your foot in the door...catch some emerging film making talent. Tough gig though!

Bill

Lol... Yeah' Right!
I wouldn't last 5 minutes on a campus full of liberal egg-heads with degrees, and would be zit-faced Nazis!

Yeah you can show up at film festivals too with a bunch of business cards with links. Pretty easy exchange, here take this card....

The other low hanging fruit opps are going to colleges, and asking student film makers if they want it.

I have one song on a podcast, it's used as the background while the speaker is giving his intro. It never got me one sale, but it did get some emails to the podcaster asking who and what it was.

I also have a song in a college thesis video...lol. It happened to be a song about bullying, when the thesis was about bullying.

And I had a song played on a gameboard website, a sports game. Stayed up for about 4 months, it got me hundreds of listens but only amounted in 10 dollars worth of sales.

ALot of youtubers need music, they might be receptive, it's all low hanging fruit but a bullet on your resume.