Clients Report Success with YouTube, iTunes, Kickstarter and Other I-venues.

Bill Watson, music producer @ Nashville Trax

Wow, what a time in history to be a songwriter, it’s amazing!

Google Play, You Tube, iTunes, Amazon Advantage, Kickstarter, websites, e-mail marketing through Constant Contact…Songwriters don’t need record labels anymore to recoup an investment in demos and promo!

Clients are reporting great success with Play It Again Demos and Nashville Trax productions!

Gary Nowak’s YouTube video “Gasoline” (a song produced at Play It Again Demos which Gary posts under the name “Jess Mei”) is closing in on a half million views. You Tube pays for views of original song material as well as cuts the owner in on ad revenue.

Help Gary get the ball rolling on our latest work for him, the song A Miracle At Work which he built his new video around, just posted under his “Jess Mei” moniker.

And yet another client, Nicholas Gianetti reports getting a Nashville Trax single funded for $40,000 for a video, CD and promo through Kickstarter.

When I received an e-mail from Jim Bussey saying that he’d earned over $300,000 on his song “I can See It In Your Eyes” from various Internet sources to date, it struck me that he invested $1.200 in the recording and profited by over $298,000! Yet there’s likely some guy out in Ames, Iowa somewhere who had an equally good song but chose a different company over Nashville Trax, and received the typical competent, but bland, recording.

And the song went nowhere.

He’s probably walking around the streets of Ames thinking, “Man, good thing I saved that extra $250 bucks that Play It Again company wanted!”

When I started into the business everything was done by mail. There were no MP3s to shoot around on the Internet in seconds. No YouTube videos to instantly publish your song to the world.

Looking back, it was ridiculous what songwriters went through to get a song contracted with a major label or major music publisher. But that was the only game on the planet. Impress the gatekeepers or else.

Or else your songs stayed in a drawer or you played a home made demo for family and friends only.

People did “indie projects” but good luck getting anywhere, advertising in print medium was too costly to sustain. And getting the free publicity necessary via radio airplay? It happened, but very rarely. Now free and nearly free marketing opportunities abound.

The gatekeepers are still there generating 1.000 rejection letters and e-mails for every, “please let us contract this song” phone call.

They are still a valid path to try in pursuit of a major label Billboard hit but songwriters don’t need them anymore to be heard! There was an article in the last Nashville Scene noting that some songwriters are making more on YouTube than they would with a Billboard hit through a major label deal.

Google Play, You Tube, iTunes, Amazon Advantage, Kickstarter, websites, e-mail marketing…Songwriters simply don’t need the big company investment anymore to recoup an investment in demos and promo!

Songwriters don’t need them to make income from songs!

Frankly, if the gatekeepers ever disappear entirely, I won’t miss them much. How about you?– b.e. watson