EP17 - How to Make Your Music Unique

Authenticity in your music is so important in sync licensing.

Do you feel as though not enough of the real you is coming through in your tracks?

Here is a trick to sound less like your idols and more like your true self that everyone wants to hear.

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If you want more tips and ideas on how to get your music into tv and film: https://syncsongwriter.com

For my free cheatsheet that shows you how to connect with the right people in licensing: https://syncsongwriter.com/guide

To join the Art Of The Song Pitch - a proven step-by-step process that shows you exactly how to license your music to TV & film successfully in precise detail, where we personally introduce you to top music supervisors: http://artofthesongpitch.com

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

It just rained and everything smells fresh. What is it about a fresh rain that makes it feel like a brand new day?

Now, I don't know the answer to that, but it made me think of your music. Made me think, how is it that we're able to use all the same tools, all the same kind of formulas that we use, at least in the Western world, of chorus, bridge, and verse, and stuff. And still make original sounding music. How does it not just sound like the same thing all the time?

A favorite example I like to use is like the three words, “I love you.” We hear them from all kinds of different people in our life. We hear them from our parents. We hear them from our children if we have them, we hear them from our significant others. And it is completely new all the time. It's the same three words, and yet it always sounds fresh and new, just like a new rain in the forest.

So, thinking about your music, I'm thinking about getting your music into TV and film, and one thing that there's a place for are soundalikes. You can actually imitate somebody, sound just like them, and get in there because it sounds just like the other song.

The problem is, when bigger artists are trying to get music into TV and film, sometimes it costs so much money. The publishing companies are pushing them, but they're sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars if you want to have a big, big star in your show. So they could go and say, “Hey, I can get a sound alike for a lot cheaper than that and put them in.”

Now this accounts for a very low percentage of syncs, so it's not something that I would advise doing. The main thing that they're after, music supervisors and big agents and top libraries, they're after people who have authenticity.

Now, it's important to have the same language. You don't want to be completely new. I don't think anybody's completely new. But you don't want to be so out there that people have to kind of grow on you. A sleeper album, that's like the death knell for sync licensing. Your song goes by once. You have to hook them in. You've got to capture them with what you're doing. And a part of that is familiarity. And a part of it is knowing that, “Oh, this is something I understand. It's a language I speak. I can get behind this.”

And then you add the twist. The twist is your own thing. Your own voice. The way you stitch your melody together. The way you sing. The way you strum your guitar. All the things that make you, you.

Your fingerprint - artistic fingerprint - is what it's all about and getting your music out there in a way that is so compelling because it's fresh, it's new - and that's how people sort of judge that sort of thing.

Now there's a big difference between being inspired by and imitating. When you're imitating, you're in a sea of imitators. That's the problem is that even if a supervisor was saying, “Well, I'd like a soundalike,” they're still looking at all of these people who imitate, right? Or, even if it wasn't a soundalike, it's something ike, “I really want to have something that reminds people really strongly of this artist.”

Because so many people imitate, then that's the problem. You're like this fish in a huge ocean of imitators. And you see that all the time,