The Music Submission Process

     When submitting music to a music supervisor for placement, there are a few things that songwriters and producers must know in order to get the best response. These few details should be helpful to the music supervisor that will be considering your music for a potential placement on one of the projects that they place music on for a sitcom, movie, commercial, or any other digital media format.

     The number one problem for music supervisors is the cd’s that show up on their desk without the proper information required and it also makes the music supervisor job easier when they are attempting to listen to your work. Most supervisors use iTunes to dock songs in their database to listen to songs. When music supervisors upload your songs into iTunes, they are looking to see these things.

CD Submissions

1.     Put the track list on the cd case and not the cd itself.  (Durango Songwriters, 2012)

     This is the first indication that you are a novice or amateur. The music supervisor needs to be able to see the name of the song, the name of the artist, and genre in their iTunes application as soon as your cd is uploaded. This is providing the music publisher with the right information and it saves them time from having to take the cd out of the computer and write the names of your songs down and put the info into iTunes themselves. Your job in submitting your music is to provide the easiest way for the music supervisor to get the information about your song. Do not write song names on the cd itself, and please make sure you do not send a cd with any information about the songs. This is a good way for your cd to be trashed.

2.     Contact information must be on the cd. (Durango Songwriters, 2012)

     This is really a no brainer. This is the information that the supervisor uses to contact you the songwriter when they are interested in placing your music. Why would a person leave off this valuable information? It is easy to forget but could end up costing you the opportunity of a lifetime. Place the contact information somewhere on the cd case and make sure that it is legible and easy to read. An insert would be a great place to put this information. You cover art should be on side and your contact information should be on the other side. The easiest way to do this is to do it on iTunes by placing your contact information in the comment column.

3.     Provide the writer, publisher, and master information (Durango Songwriters, 2012)

This is the most important information the music supervisor needs. The music     supervisor needs the writer and publisher’s share of the composition. This explains who will receive what percentage of royalties for the song being submitted. They also need to know who owns the masters of the song as well. You could have a publishing deal with a PRO and they could own the masters. You could be the songwriter and publisher and own 100% of the masters. There are plenty of situations that could determine who owns the masters to a song. This information is just as important as the writer and publisher’s royalty. The person who owns the masters owns the copyright of the song.

 Music supervisor Madonna Wade Reed said “The bottom line is, when a music supervisor looks at your cd in iTunes, you need to have the name of the song under the title column, the artist name under the artist title column, and your name and contact information in the comment column.”

 There a few websites that can help you with helping you streamline this process and make it a little easier. Take a look at a site named Gracenote. “This site allows a user to automatically upload their cd to their library without having to type the track names, or artist and album information.” (Gracenote, 2012) The second website is ID3 Tag Editor. “ID3 tags allows information such as the title, artist, album, track, year, cover picture or other information about the file to be stored in the file itself. “ (ID3 Tag Editor, 2012)

In conclusion, the moral of the story here is to make sure that you provide a professional submission in order for your works to be taken seriously. Then there is also the music, which has to sound good too and be a good fit for the placement that it is involved with.

References:

(n.d)(n.a.). Apple and iTunes Genius. Retrieved on June 17, 2012 from

http://www.gracenote.com/casestudies/itunes/.

(n.d)(n.a.). About ID3 Tag Editor. Retrieved on June 17, 2012 from

 http://www.id3tageditor.com/.

(n.d)(Reed, Madonna). Durango Songwriters. Retrieved on June 17, 2012 from http://www.durango-songwriters-expo.com/friends-of-the-expo-music-supervisor-madonna-wade-reed.html