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I am happy to talk to you again, especially about my favorite subject “Music”! For those of you who have found an instrument, or your vocal chords that you feel is worth being an instrument and pursuing a career in music, God bless you. I wish you the best with your talent. You are blessed with this gift! Yet after watching American Idol a lot of you were not blessed. You will be told by others if you have any hope of being successful. It is not a business for the faint of heart. This is a cruel business, people will tell you, “you don’t add up to anything close to talent”. If you ask any major artist they will tell you every record company turned them down. I mean from Boston to Billy Joel to anyone, you have seen Behind the Music on VH-1. The record companies watch to see what the others do. They sit in high rise office buildings, Music is on the streets. What do you think is wrong with this picture? The smart companies are on the streets, watching. On-line business has changed the industry too. Some songwriters are not getting paid. That is sad, they work hard and it’s taken away.
This has been an overview of the basic Industry. Let’s say you have worked hard and you have your group or you are a single artist and hire musicians to back your band. Are you a writer of your own music? If you are you need to get with the copyright bureau of the United States and get copyrights on your material. If you sign a record deal make sure you also make a publishing agreement or you will lose 6 cents a song every time a Cd is sold. This turns into big money. It breaks down like this: 50% for words, 50% for music, not intros or bridges or Leads, we are talking about verses and chorus’s. If you don’t know as far as song context that I just said, go back and practice more! I will tell you here, Intros start a song, verses tell the story, and the chorus brings the real message home. Bridges are an interlude that expresses more when needed, and endings are obvious, yet make them interesting. That is the basic outlook of a song! Practice, practice, practice!
Hopefully you have some great songs by now and you are looking how to move forward! If you have gotten this far, I want to go to my article about Stage Shows, then I want to hear from you in an e-mail-teddy@teddymueller.com You are building, the next step is one of the most important, a Manager. They can make or break you as an artist, they can take all your money, destroy your reputation, and more! This is an important choice, be careful. You must remember too to get your own image together, what you want to look like, what audience are you going after, these things the band needs to do, managers don’t want to deal with this. They want to see the whole package already to go. So spend time on this, after all it’s your career! Also watch any record deal you are offered. You want what you deserve, but remember, Cd’s are only a promotional tool to get people to your shows. Of course you want a good label a good deal and a strong Distribution Co. An Artist makes the real money, with the live show, for that is all your money less expenses of course. You also make the huge money in this day and age with Merchandising, T-Shirts, Hats, any gimmick you can think of. The best one in the 80’s was ZZ Tops Key chain. Everyone at the show had to have one because it became so popular in the videos. Well $4 times 10,000 people=$40,000. That is brilliant marketing!
This is only an article to give you a basic understanding of the Music Business and You.
I only hope that there are some younger people out there are playing instruments and not games. Music is so important to the human soul, don’t let it die. Honor it cherish it, but most of all enjoy it, you’ll find it touching your heart, be it hard rock, jazz, blues, classics, country, big band. Think about Tony Bennett he has kept it all alive. Hope you learned a little something. If you have any questions feel free to e-mail me. Practice and enjoy the gift you have been given!
Teddy Mueller 2007
write by Diego