Can you find success with one excellent song only?

[lovefilmmusic]

Dear all,

This is a hypothetical question, so pls be patient with me. Suppose you have one song, which is regarded by quite a few professional critics as being excellent. But these people are not in a position to promote the song for you.

What can you do with this one song? Is there any mainstream publisher who would be willing to assess your work?

My sincere thanks,

[CHuckmott]

My research on the forums here and elsewhere suggest it could be done, but is akin to hoping to win the lottery, lots of variables involved, if you are measuring your chances n dollars and cents. Most pro composers write everyday, fulltimers basically all day long like a day job to try to come up with several quality tracks. The other number I see randomly thrown around is 1000 -1500 tracks (probably talking instrumentals I'm sure, raning from 30-60 secs to full 3 minutes in length. Been suggested to me a safe length to shoot for is between 2:30 and 3 minutes. Others may disagree. Getting your track in the hands of a reputable library with a good history of placements also highyly recommended. Or better yet directly to a music supervisor. Seems to be a consensus that there should be a focus on quality above all. That said, I hear guys exist who can crank out 1-2 quality tracks in a days work. Again, here on this forum, and others, these seem to be themes I see consistently.

[coachdebra]

I have to agree with Chuck - are you creating a career or hoping to hit the jackpot? If you want a career making music and making a living at it, no I don't think one excellent song is enough.

But I'm also curious at what is motivating the question. Do you believe you only have one song in you? That writing that song was a fluke? It seems to me that if you've written one excellent song, you have the capacity to write many more really good and at least a few additional excellent songs. If you're willing to put the time and energy and commitment into it.

Does every song you write have to be excellent in order to be successful? I don't think so. And I think perfectionism can be counter-productive anyway.

Hope that helps,
Debra

[davewalton]

I think that would be like having one piece of art and looking for the "right" person to buy it for a million dollars.

Of course what you more or less are describing is pretty famously known as the "One Hit Wonder". VH1 has done specials that lasted for days on end while they counted down the Top 100 or whatever "One Hit Wonders". Of course even then, those bands/artists had other music too and it's usually the case that their other music somehow led up to the one hit wonder.

In film/tv there's literally millions of "slots" for placement in thousands and thousands of tv shows, advertisements and films. In radio, there's only 100 slots for the "Billboard Top 100" and only one slot for "#1 Hit". Mostly the process of making reasonable and consistant money is through having a fairly large catalog of music where each track hopefully contributes to your success as a whole.

I remember Michael Laskow saying one time "When somebody is praising your song, ask them for $50,000 to help promote it, assuring them of getting a cut of the profits. That's when you'll get the *real* critique."

All the most famous writers (Diane Warren, Jeff Steele, etc) have hundreds, probably thousands of songs in their catalog. Probably they got there by doing "Write, submit, forget... repeat."

[lovefilmmusic]

Hi all, thank you for all your kind replies. I wanted to ask this question after reading that a co-writer of Rihanna's hit, Umbrella, earned nearly $15 millions thanks to that song alone.

This makes me wonder whether you should focus your energy (time and resources) to pitch one song that you believe will be a hit.

Thank you.

[michael11]

I certainly see some merit in your thinking,it’s quite an interesting concept.

[DesireInspires]

I remember Michael Laskow saying one time "When somebody is praising your song, ask them for $50,000 to help promote it, assuring them of getting a cut of the profits. That's when you'll get the *real* critique."

Well put. Asking someone to put their money where their mouth is has a strange way of changing a conversation.

[matto]

Hi all, thank you for all your kind replies. I wanted to ask this question after reading that a co-writer of Rihanna's hit, Umbrella, earned nearly $15 millions thanks to that song alone.

This makes me wonder whether you should focus your energy (time and resources) to pitch one song that you believe will be a hit.

Thank you.

First of all, that figure has almost certainly been reported incorrectly. While this song was one of the biggest songs of the decade in the 2000s (and having a song like that is probably considerably less likely than winning the lottery), you will notice that he never directly claims *he* made that much money, but that *the song* made that much money. That *is* possible when you factor in record sales, world-wide radio/tv airplay and live performance revenue of the original and the numeorous covers, plus the various licenses that would have been issued for synchronized uses. There are four writers on the song who would split half of that money assuming the figure refers to royalty income only (this is assuming the publishing wasn't split among them as well).

That being said, if you have a song with that type of potential, it's very likely that somebody with the necessary connections will notice and take it upon themselves to try to get that song cut...whether it be for a piece of the action or just because they love great songs and want to see a deserving writer succeed.
But, not to rain on your parade, but just to be realistic...it is really very unlikely that you would have a song like that on your hands because they are one in a million...and a rather large percentage of them are written by professionals with considerable track records.

Most professional songwriters (and I'm not talking about composers writing tracks for film/tv placements here but songwriters who focus on getting music cut by artists) have a substantial catalog of music ranging from at least few albums' worth to several hundred or more. It would be *exceedingly* rare to make a living from just one song, and to write that one hit song without first having written a considerably large number of duds...

matto

[Kolstad]

I think Keith Urban has said something a la "if you take care of music, music will take care of you".. It's a mindset I like a lot. Pointe is, just focus on the music. It's like soccer, everyone wants to score the goals, but if they only have their eyes on the goal, you will end up losing the ball.

There already seem to be one answer in the Rhianna story you cited, so therefore the contrasts are more interesting.

[matto]

Magne makes a great point.
Another point is that regardless of how much money "Umbrella" made and for whom, the writer in question has *not* just written that one song. Far from it in fact, he has dozens of other cuts and Umbrella wasn't even his first hit.
So I think that kind of answers your question. Had he concentrated on writing that 'one excellent song' he probably would've never even gotten to the point in his career where he wrote Umbrella...