Letter No. 44 [writing “hold me” part II]
Dear friend,
Here is the second half of writing “Hold Me” that I promised (part I). The things I talk about here—recording, engineering, and releasing—are the hardest parts for me, because I still don’t know very much about them. That’s why I’m doing this challenge though!
Recording:
The process of recording this song took a couple weeks. I’ll often initially record a couple tracks and vocals for an idea, and then let it sit for a little bit. I did that with “Hold Me,” and would come back every few days to work on different parts. Sometimes I worked on vocals, sometimes I worked on the instrumental interlude. When I started recording with my first single, I had no idea how much time goes into this step. For example, I spent hours recording different sections of the melody for “Hold Me” over and over again until I was happy with them. I’ve learned to push myself to create the best I can create, but I’m also trying to learn when to step back at a certain point and be happy with it/put it out into the world. I also know that after I release a song, those little parts I don’t like during recording stand out in a glaring way to me, so I try to eliminate them during recording.
Starting engineering on “Hold Me” in my closet studio. :)
Engineering:
The mixing process (which is more about how each track sounds and works together) took me a while with this song, because I kept changing the instrumental interlude, and changing the levels for the different tracks as I went. I would work on the mixing for an hour or two, then have to let my ears rest and listen to it later, then change something else, and on it went. There are a lot of plug-ins and affects you can put on your tracks, but I didn’t do too much with this track in that regard. I added reverb, worked on the sound levels, and panned the vocals.
The mastering process (which is more about polishing your single and making it sound good for any listening device) is the most difficult for me. I’m still not sure about many parts of this process, like exactly how loud I should master my single to be, or exactly what I need to tweak to make it sound professional. I think this will come with more research and practice, but it’s a bit of a struggle right now, and definitely an art form that I want to leave to experts most of the time!
It snowed on the morning of my release, which was perfect timing!
The Release:
The Business Side:
Every time before you can release a song, you have to use a distributor to put it on all streaming platforms. I use Distrokid, so I put in all of the information for “Hold Me” and set a date for the release. Usually, you upload your single/album at least a month out, so you can try to get onto playlists and make sure all streaming platforms will have your music available by release day (some take a little longer than others).
Three other things you should do before releasing music are 1. get it copyrighted, 2. get it registered with SoundExchange and your PRO, and 3. create an ISRC code for it. To copyright your song in the United States, you go to copyright.gov and register your song/album (you have to pay a fee and it takes a little while to process). To register your song with SoundExchange, you have to first make an account (which is free). SoundExchange collects and gives you certain royalties. This paragraph from their FAQ page describes their function:
“SoundExchange administers the statutory license, which allows services to stream artistic content while paying a fixed rate for each play. SoundExchange collects and distributes royalties for the featured artist and the sound recording copyright owner when content is played on a non-interactive digital source.”
You should also sign up with a Performing Rights Organization (PRO). These organizations gather and pay you different royalties than SoundExchange does. It’s all a little tricky, but you can find articles that explain it (and Ari Herstand does a great job explaining all the different PROs/kinds of royalties in his book, How to Make it in the New Music Business). This is what ASCAP does, but basically every PRO has the same function (taken from ASCAP’s main page):
“We license over 11.5 million ASCAP songs and scores to the businesses that play them publicly, then send the money to our members as royalties. We use cutting-edge technology to process over one trillion performances every year - more than any PRO in the world.”
There are a few different PRO’s in the United States, such as ASCAP, SESAC, and BMI. I’m registered with ASCAP, but there is a one-time fee of $100 for signing up as a writer and publisher, which most independent artists are now ($50 for each).
An International Standard Recording Code (ISRC) is “a unique identification system for sound recordings and music video recordings. Each ISRC code identifies a specific unique recording and can be permanently encoded into a product as a kind of digital fingerprint” (dittomusic.com). This page on Ditto Music also tells you how to register for one. It’s a pretty easy process, but you should definitely keep the codes organized, as each new song gets a code.
I also made a playlist for songs like “Hold Me” that I added to my artist profile on Spotify.
The Marketing Side:
I had a few ideas for the release of “Hold Me.” Because it’s a very personal song, I thought I could use the hashtag #holdme and ask people to share a story about someone that helped them through the difficulty of this past year.
I also did a countdown, shared snippets of my song on different platforms, wrote part I of these letters about writing “Hold Me,” and submitted my song to bloggers and influencers.
There are a lot of moving parts and strategies to music marketing (and I honestly feel very new to this game as well!), but I think the main thing is that people want to hear a story. They want to know why you wrote those lyrics, and your process behind writing the song, and why it’s so special to you. They want to know your story, so I tried to think about my story for this song (I explain most of it in part I).
It’s also good to have a thank you post for everyone involved with making the song, and to your fans for listening to your music and supporting you. You can do a contest and give-away to promote your music and thank fans, but I haven’t done this yet, so I can’t say anything about it now (I will soon in the future!). :)
And now I’m already finishing up with my next single! It’s going to be released on February 12th, and I’ll be sharing the story behind it too (I’m also going to let my fans choose the cover art, so if you want to vote, you can find that on my Instagram)!
Until my next letter,
Tara