If you want to license more of your music in more places you have to get more
of your music to more people in the business. It sounds obvious. It is.
But it's easy to forget to follow through on. Assuming your music
is where it needs to be in terms of production and you're making music that
there is a demand for, the next step is to connect your music with the right
people.
I suggest using
an industry directory, or several, as your main tool for building your contact
list. Of course I am biased to the one I publish. It's the best and
most comprehensive directory I know of for the price. Using directories
will save you a LOT of time digging around on Google looking for places to
submit your music. They are well worth the mininal cost if you are
serious about making contacts and getting your music licensed.
Here's the
system I and my assistant use for building our contact list:
Several times a
month I have my assistant, Ligia, email all of the contacts in one category
within our directory. She sends a brief email introducing our company and
what we do and asks what is the best way to submit music and what kind of
styles they are currently in need of. One week she might email
specifically music publishers. Another week she'll email Film Trailer
Houses. Another week supervisors... and so on.
If we get a
response we create a folder specifically for that company and of course submit
any relevant music they are looking for and follow up with them. That company
is then removed from our internal directory so we know not to contact them
again with our introductory email.
We do this same
process for all of the categories in our directory. When Ligia runs out
of categories she starts over emailing any companies that didn't respond to our
initial email. Every time she does this we get new responses. Some
companies take three or four emails before we get a response. This could
be because they don't need anything when we initially respond and they do
later. It could be because they're too busy to respond initially.
Whatever the case, we continue to yield new leads for months using this
process.
When we get a
positive response we submit the styles of music they request and we then work
on building an ongoing relationship where we continue to supply music on an
ongoing basis. Some companies pan out and some don't. Sometimes
we're simply not a good fit for whatever reason. Sometimes there are
contract issues that prevent us from working together. But we have been
building a solid list of people working in the business who turn to us for
music.
You can do the
same if you follow this approach regularly.
To get our comprehensive
directory containing over 1,200 listings for music supervisors, publishers,
music libraries, video game companies, music trailer houses and more for the
cost of a pizza visit
http://www.howtolicenseyourmusic.com/music-licensing-directory.php
Happy Songwriting!
Aaron Davison