The art of making a name for yourself
In the modern world we all live in, music is a business like any other, it has its ups and downs as well as risks that come with it. As such, music can be treated like any other business model, and a constant fact about any business model is the idea that there are more ways than one to promote yourself or your product which in this case is the music you are making. We all watch TV, play video games and watch various YouTube shows and Netflix. So as a musician did you ever ask yourself, who makes the music for all these types of entertainment? It’s silly to think that programmers that make video games produce music, and yet, there is some quality music in the game industry which is made by famous artists like DMX. So what is at hand here? Every aspect of the previously mentioned relies in the hands of Music Supervisors. They generally oversee every aspect of TV show, movies and video games that is music related.
What is a music supervisor?
As we have stated before, Music Supervisors are people in charge of overseeing the music aspect of our daily lives. For example, their job is to negotiate with the director of a certain TV show, this can be very tricky, TV show directors can be quite abstract people to begin with, and sometimes they don’t know what they want. So a music supervisor need to understand the mentality of the director and hand in order to find out what he or she is looking for in terms of music for their TV show. After the Music Supervisor has a general idea what to look for, they will generally look at the resources they have at their disposal. By this we mean that he or she will look at the available bands and music makers that are looking for a job, and which one is suited the best for the job at hand. O needless to say that if you want to promote your music in video games TV shows, music supervisors need to have you on their map. After you have done this, the best thing for any musician to do is not to let the quality of your music drop, a good product is the best marketing that you can afford, and it goes a long way.
What comes after you got a job?
This part of business can often be quite tricky, a lot of money can be involved and the number of involved parties can only make things worse. Some of the involved parties can be song writers, music producer, the artist, Mixtape Makers and record label you record under and many others. So the contract you set up before you start the job at hand can often be quite tricky to set up in terms of trying to satisfy the needs of all involved parties as well as the music supervisor and the director that you are now working for. When doing this we advise that you keep a clear mind and keep all options available, not every deal goes the way you want to.
Contacting a music supervisor
Before you put any effort in to contacting a music supervisor we advise you be aware of the following. Nobody likes spam E-mails, so the same can be said for any music supervisors, this is a good way to kill of your career before you even started it. So don’t go around sending mass E-mails to people that you don’t even know are interested. One thing that we do recommend is the following. Take a look at the music you make in general. What emotions surface when you listen to your music, this is very important when trying to get involved with Music Supervisors, and let’s face it, you never heard “Metallica” play in a soap opera, so needless to say you need to find the right people for the type of music you play. While doing this does sound tricky, it is really quite simple to do in terms of finding the people to contact. Let’sassume you watch TV a lot, which you probably do. The odds are that you heard music that is similar to yours in many TV shows or movies in terms of the overall tone and the emotional response in general. Now comes the fun part. Wait for the credits of the TV show or movie in question and look for the name of the music supervisor, it will be there. After you have achieved this and now have a clear name of a Music Supervisor the only thing to do is some internet research, the odds are that the name of the music supervisor is already registered with a major company and his or hers E-mail address can easily obtained. So by now you have a targeted music supervisor that will almost certainly be interested in the music that you have you have to offer.
Sending the E-mail that will change everything
For starters when was the last time you read a long E-mail with a lot of attachments? The odds are you never did that, the same can be done for music supervisors, nobody wants to read column after column of text in order to find out a couple of key information’s. So it’s safe to assume that Music Supervisors, busy as they are, won’t read a 1000 word essay that you sent them. Keep your E-mail short and say everything in a shortest manner possible. And make your subject line include simple keywords that you know that will work and make any music supervisor open it. For example, “A great song that has 50 cent all over it”. Another thing that is important is the fact that under no circumstance should you attach and MP3 of your song. A general god idea is to simply provide a link of your song to YouTube. Clicking one link to listen to a good song goes a long way than having to download it.