Someone has to do the leg-work and promote your songs. If not, your songs will remain on your desk or stored in a file cabinet.

Getting someone to take notice of your music is hard work and not all musicians enjoy promoting themselves and their music.

Walking into a music studio and asking to see the boss in order to submit your songs is not an effective way to get your songs marketed in today’s music environment. Leaving your demo with the receptionist usually means that it will be “deep-sixed” within hours or minutes!

Unless you know someone who is active in the music industry, it is next to impossible for you to have someone listen to your songs.

Here are ten approaches to getting your music out to the public.

Remember to always identify yourself as the creative director and not as songwriter.

1. Locate a band that plays your style of music. Befriend them and then give them a demo CD or video of your songs. If they should decide to play them at the venues, this will gain exposure for you and your music. They may even be willing to record them for you in a studio of live. I suggest that you make a demo of one or two of your “hottest” songs on a CD and place your very best song on Track one. Make sure that the introductions are short (no longer than four measures) and get the chorus or them quickly. Remember that up-tempo songs get marketed quicker than ballads, and Seasonal songs (Christmas) are almost impossible to promote without a prior track record of hits.

2. Referrals from a friend or acquaintance in the business really opens doors. Always get permission to use their name before verbally dropping it to others, or including it in a correspondence. ” suggested that I contact you.” or “Your name was given to me by ___________” A name of a prominent mutual friend will probably get you past the receptionist. Contacting them by phone or email is a good way to ask if you can submit a song for their consideration. If the answer is “yes,” make sure you send a professional-looking package the very next day and mark it “Requested Material.”

3. Make sure that your demo is “hot.” If you’re not a great singer, hire someone who is. Pay them to sing the song. Most demos can sound professional with a vocalist, keyboardist, and bassist. Most producers have to hear a near finished product to appreciated what the song really sounds like. Make sure you mention a particular artist or band that your songs are most suited for. This will greatly assist the producer to “hear” the song in light of a particular group. If you are sending a vocal that fits a particular female vocalist, don’t record it using a male vocalist and vice versa.

4. Use an established music attorney who can guide you through copyrights, contracts, and so on. Make sure that they handles your type of music. Their professional contacts in the music industry are most valuable. Don’t waste time sitting in their office until you are offered a deal (contract). Remember time is money!

5. Cold calls can be difficult. These should be avoided, but occasionally it is necessary to contact an industry person who you don’t know. It is best to contact him or her ahead of time and ask permission to send a demo of your songs. Include in the package a cover letter on your company letterhead stationery. State what you expect them to do for you. You should include a high-gloss business card listing you as creative director, a short bio, CD or DVD demo of your songs, lyric sheet, and a two-sentence summary of your company and recent successes. Make sure to include your name, address, phone number, email address, and web site address on all items submitted.

6. Attend music industry conventions and meet people in the business. The following organizations hold such meetings: ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, and NARAS, NAMM. Awards events, industry parties, showcases, and fundraisers are good places to meet people in the industry. I suggest that you do not try to market your songs at these gatherings. Get the names of influential people and ask them if you can send them your material. If “yes” make sure to send them the “requested material” within two days.

7. After submitting the CD to a producer, it is wise to follow up with a phone call or email within a two-week period. Call to ensure that your package was received and if there has been any reaction to the material.

8. Obtaining a foothold in this business takes perseverance, persistence and patience. You must be assertive (focused) but not aggressive (annoying). You must project an air of confidence in your ability and in the quality of your songs. Avoid pretense and be yourself.

9. Here are a few calling tips:

• Never call the day after a 3-day weekend.
• Never call early in the morning.
• Never call anyone on Friday afternoon or evening.
• Never call anyone between Christmas and New Year’s or prior to a vacation such as July 4th, or Thanksgiving.

10. Online Marketing is a great avenue to explore.

Today, there are many musicians who are selling their songs and CDs online rather than going through the traditional channels of music publishers and record companies. It is relatively easy to create an immediate “buzz” and market your own songs online. Videos of your songs or group can be posted on You Tube, Google Video, and so many more sites.

I’ve written before about my strong belief that the best music ever made is the music being made right now, no matter when right now happens to be. To believe otherwise is to accept that it’s not worth looking for new music, and I can’t psychologically ken to the fact that popular music’s best days are behind it. Because of that, I generally hate it when people make statements about “The best music ever was from the ’60s” or “It’s all been downhill since the ’70s” or other such reactionary claims, since I really do believe that there are just as many musical geniuses plying their trades now as there were then, and I view claims to the contrary as nothing more than admissions that the claimant’s musical tastes have ossified, typically around the tunes that defined their teen years. And I don’t want to be one of those people.

That being said, while I love a lot of new stuff coming out these days, that doesn’t necessarily mean that I like the constructs within which that good stuff is created, nor the contemporary terminology used by critics to describe it. One of the most annoying musical trends of the past decade is the rise of the so-called “musical collective,” where a bunch of folks of varying degrees of musical talent get together and record some stuff under one big umbrella band name as though they’re all a bunch of pals on equal footing, hunkered down around a campfire together, even though (a) there’s almost always one or two primary guiding forces behind the proceedings, and (b) when there’s not, the product probably should be released by five separate artists, since it sounds like a compilation album more than it does a cohesive piece of work. Bands that fit those criteria, and that I’ve seen publicly labeled (sometimes even self-labeled) as musical collectives include, but are not limited to: Animal Collective, Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, Bruce Peninsula, Hidden Cameras, The New Pornographers, Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zeroes, and various artists associated with the anticon label and Elephant 6 label/band.

I actually like the music made by many of those groups, but I wish they’d embrace the reality of rock and roll and do away with the whole myth of the collective, because from my standpoint, no rock and roll band should have more than five members, and anybody else beyond the core members who plays with them is a side person, not a band member, not a fellow collective musician, not a peer, not an equal. It’s not, mind you, that large numbers of people working on an album together is anything new, it’s just a matter of how such albums are packaged and marketed. Let’s look through the lens of musical collectivism at a record that many listeners and critics alike might consider to be the ultimate rock and roll statement of intent and execution, Exile on Main St. by The Rolling Stones. Sure, there were almost two dozen people whose voices and instruments appear on the final product, but how absurd would it be to see it presented in 2010 collective style, thusly:

Equals on Grand Street!

By The Rolling Stones Collective

Featuring (in alphabetical order): Venetta Fields, Shirley Goodman, Joe Green, Nicky Hopkins, Mick Jagger, Bobby Keys, Clydie King, Jerry Kirkland, Tami Lynn, Kathi McDonald, Jimmy Miller, Al Perkins, Bill Plummer, Billy Preston, Jim Price, Mac “Dr. John” Rebennack, Keith Richards, Ian Stewart, Mick Taylor, Richard Washington, Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman.

No, no, no, no, NO! There were loads of people playing on that album, but there were only five Rolling Stones, and everybody else was the help. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, mind you. Good help makes for great music. Backing singers, string and horn sections, percussionists, guest soloists, all of them can do wonders for an album. But when their time in the studio or onstage is done, they should take their session fees, they should go home, and they should let The Rolling Stones get on with the job of being The Rolling Stones. Rock and roll is not democratic. Rock and roll is not nice. If you play the triangle and glockenspiel on a backing track of a Rolling Stones album, this does not make you a Rolling Stone, nor a member of a the Rolling Stones Collective. You are a side person. You are the help.

So how have we come to a point where rock and roll collectives are increasingly viewed as the norm? My theory is that collective fever is a defining trademark of a generation of overly-sensitive young people whose formative childhood experiences were shaped by overly-cautious, overly-involved, late Baby Boomer and early Gen X parents, who discouraged serious competition, scoring in sporting events, and unstructured violent childrens’ games. In the world that these children inhabited, everybody was considered to be a winner, all the time, as long as everybody tried their best.

Sure, Strapping Young Lars over there may have scored six goals and assisted on another this afternoon for the St. Sensitive School Soccer Superior Superstar Greatkids, but would he have done so if Little Thad wasn’t on the bench rooting for him the whole time? Of course not, so that’s why Lars and Thad both deserve a blue ribbon for excellence on the playing field, right? That way, Thad’s parents aren’t ever forced to have that conversation where they explain to him that, Son, some people are good at soccer, and some people just aren’t. Because that conversation might hurt Thad’s feelings and cause him to have socialization issues, and we wouldn’t want that, would we? I mean, how will Thad get into Colgate or Sarah Lawrence or Amherst if he can’t socialize properly? We can’t force his future into an aimless existence of State colleges and cubicle jobs by not embracing and affirming his desire to be successful at soccer, can we? What kind of parents and teachers would that make us? So give him the damn blue ribbon already!!! There, Thad! You’re a winner!

Well… fast forward 20 years, and Thad is now one of 17 members of the St. Sensitive Collective, where he sits on a bench backstage and hums guide vocals while offering encouraging rhythmic claps of affirmation. He’s a winner and a member of the collective, because he tries his best, and no one has the heart to tell him otherwise. Thad’s Mom and Dad, for their part, are still paying off the $97,000 worth of loans that he incurred over three years as a Sociology of Feminist Interactive Media major at Hamilton, before he left college without a degree to become a member of a musical collective. This tale has no happy ending, especially when you discover that Strapping Young Lars later married the prom queen and is now making a quarter million clams a year working for her dad’s financial advisement firm. Now, there’s a winner!

I conclude, therefore, that musical collectives emerge when the should-be-dominant singers, songwriters, guitarists or other musical personalities never develop the spines they need to assert themselves as rock and roll dictators, who will keep the musical trains running on time, just so as long as their backup singers, string sections, and percussionists do their jobs, just as they are directed to do them. These collective musicians may make nice enough music accordingly, but none of them are going to change or chart the future of music as long as they’re trying to maintain a fair one-eleventh creative stake in the collective of their choosing.

Personally, I look forward to seeing the alpha members of some of those aforementioned “musical collectives” wising up, growing some stones, relegating their peripheral “members” to side person status, and getting on with the mean, ugly, unfair business of rock and roll. That way, glory lies. And I want images of glory when I rock, not images of PTA meetings crossed with hippie drum circles.