'One Minute With Dec'

I want to start this week by asking a straight question:

I’m not talking here of Members of ‘The Serious Writers Guild’…they see the light very quickly and realise the money there is to be made in this wonderful business, they just have the wool lifted from their eyes, get on, and make money from what they love doing.

But almost every Email from ‘outsiders’ [sorry about that word, but there isn’t another way of putting it] has the same sad story…for instance:

>Dear Dec, unfortunately, I've just lost my job and no income at the moment.

It seems that so many guys involved in their music somehow think that they can concentrate on it, to the exclusion of all other means of keeping the wolf from the door. They then lose their jobs, so they concentrate more on the music and gradually retreat into a horrific, claustrophobic world of just keeping busy all day ‘messing about’ with music.

They have no plan, no real knowledge of what is required to be successful in music [apart from watching ‘Pop Idol’ on Telly].

They have no conception of ‘learning our business’. They have no idea of reading the books, taking the courses, learning from those who really know [if they can find them!].  And keeping well away from those who spout 'theory', and don't speak from experience.

The Email above tells you that this girl hasn’t the first idea of how our business works…she asks the same old chestnut about Publishing that I get twelve times a week in my In-Box.

I compare this logic to walking into a solicitor’s office and asking for a job as Queens Council defending at The Old Bailey. Or walking into an operating theatre and asking to take over from a top surgeon during a brain operation…just about the same, when you think about it.

When will music guys stop thinking that this business is something you just drift into because they ‘like it’? Thinking that all you need is a bit of luck and getting to know the right people…

If the song is a genuine 'today' POTENTIAL HIT then ANY record company/production company/publisher will snatch it out of your hand and have it recorded by you or whoever - and released within three months...'cos that's about the shelf life of a Potential Hit today.

The only reason amateurs want to copyright songs is because they are CR*P [sorry to be so blunt]. They will sit around for fifteen years in the jiffy bag they posted back to themselves, and then, when Robbie or Michael Jackson [the favourite target, by the way] release a song and it is a hit, the jiffy bag holder will jump up and say that the fourth line of the third verse has three words from his chorus in...and he sent that CD to Michael Jackson fifteen years ago!

FOUL !!!!!!!!!

He will then sue Michael...who will pay $20,000 just to get rid of the aggravation....it's just not worth it to go to law over $20,000.

This is done every day of the week and is an 'industry' in the States.

So, the moral is : learn how to and then - "write HIT POTENTIAL" songs only...you then don't have to spend money copyrighting them and you become famous...make lots of dosh, and don't have to resort to sc*mbag tactics like suing Michael Jackson...

Oh, by the way, did you notice in that paragraph that the ‘being broke all the time’ angle is totally taken care of…because writing hit songs like Cathy Dennis does all the time, actually makes a fortune!

I finished my reply about Publishing to Fa**** by saying, as I have said loads of time to her, this is a business that needs to be studied and learned.....

When we put the finishing touches to the Double Interactive CD’s for ‘One Minute With Dec – The First Annual’, it amazed us the way every successful songwriter, performer, producer, said the same thing:

Learn your craft, have a plan, work the plan and most of all:

Learn to give the public WHAT THEY WANT.

As Stuart Goldsmith put it so well on the second CD:

In other words, by learning your craft, practicing your craft and learning what people want and buy, must bring you to commercial success….and that is how success is judged in our business…by the money that your product makes in the marketplace. Any other thoughts are arrogant in the extreme.

Regards

DEC

MEMBER’S TIP OF THE WEEK: The Akai S2000 [available on the Net for silly money] is a bit tricky to get your head round at first but keep the manual by your bedside table for a week and it all falls into place. If you go to  www.synthsounds.com and follow the links to Akai samplers, you can download a fully Akai approved program called "Mesa" which links the S2000 to your PC via an inexpensive SCSI card. This program lets you control all the parameters on your PC monitor via a SCSi cable (PC World bargain bin - £10) instead of the user unfriendly 2" window on the sampler.

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