What It Takes To “Make It” As A Songwriter

Posted by orlando5 in August 22nd, 2008

If you want to be professionally successful at songwriting you have to prepare yourself for the ultimate career challenge and you must ask yourself these questions; Do I have clear vision of what I want to accomplish as a songwriter? Have I sufficiently developed my talent and am I dedicated? How far do I want to go? How much am I willing to sacrifice?

Songwriters can make a great living through many avenues. You can be successful at songwriting in a variety of ways, and everyone’s definition of success varies. For example, there are many local performing songwriters who are not only content playing in small clubs, they’re actually making a good living selling their merchandise at their shows and through their web sites.

Okay, so you’ve prepared yourself by developing your talent, but have you concentrated on your appearance and the professional image you want to convey? Do you carry yourself respectably when meeting up with music industry people? Music publishing and record label representatives are always looking for talented people, and once they verify you have talent and that you’re most likely the “real deal,” they try to find out who you are as a person.

The moment you engage in a meeting with a music industry representative you’re being “sized up.” Once you’ve made a favorable, lasting impression with your talent, personality and appearance, they want to really dig deep and find out the one thing equally as important as your talent; how committed you are to being successful for their company’s benefit. The reality is - no one’s in the music business to lose money, and if you’re trying to get signed to a deal with a successful company you better believe they’re thinking about what’s in it for them!

There are many sacrifices we all make in our daily lives and songwriting, by its very nature, requires sacrificing a bit of your family life because of the amount of time you spend writing songs, improving your craft , performing your songs in public, and pitching your songs to the music industry. This can take a toll on your personal and family life even if you’re prepared but you can minimize this by communicating realistic goals to your partner and/or family members.

The bottom line is this:

No matter how you define songwriting success at it applies to you, you will have the best chance at being successful if you are totally committed to songwriting. Successful songwriters don’t reach their goals by working on their songwriting “here and there” when they get a chance. Even if they have a time-consuming day job, they develop routines that enable them to work consistently on their music and they use their time wisely.

This is a fact; The vast majority of successful songwriters live and breathe songwriting.