Advice from Road Rally Works

[randonpurcell]

I attended my first Road Rally in 2015. At the time I had a handful of licensing deals under my belt with about 5 companies, all attained through Taxi listings. I had absolutely no placements at that time. I was feeling both excited and discouraged.

I attended the Rally and took every bit of advice I could. A couple things really stuck with me though:

1) Stick to what you can do really well. Honestly, I had been trying to pitch to every listing I thought I could possibly get. But that wasn't working a lot of the time. So, after the Rally, I really dug in and just tackled the listings that I thought I could really connect with. Right away, I was getting way more forwards and much fewer returns.

2) Write often. Previously, I was sort of taking my time, maybe putting out one instrumental cue a week if I was lucky, and if I did a song with vocals it was a few weeks in the making. After the Rally, I really took this advice and started pumping out 2 or 3 cues per week (except for big orchestral cues, those I was still lucky to do 1 per week given I only have a couple hours each day to work).

3) Write, Submit, Forget, Repeat. Best advice ever. I don't allow myself to be tied to my cues emotionally. I write them, put them in my catalog, pitch them wherever they might fit, and then let them go. But I don't wait for anything. As soon as one cue is done, then next one begins.

Since that road rally, I've bumped my libraries from 5 to nearly 15, and I've written about 150 pieces of music. Best of all, of those 150, I think about 135 of them are already signed to libraries, many of them even done as work-for-hire.

And to top it off, I've gone from 0 placements to almost 100 now, and changed my ASCAP royalties from somewhere around $0 per quarter to over $1500 per quarter -- and they just keep growing.

Honestly, Taxi has really pushed me so far in such a short time, but the information and contacts I made via the Rally have been an enormous boost to my success. I can't wait for Rally 2017!

[cassmcentee]

That is awesome to hear Randall!
You confirm everything ML and Taxi teach us!
Thank you for sharing
Cass

[markhimley]

This is so great to hear, thank you for sharing! Very inspiring. I have not made any royalties but have been very productive and writing like crazy, stocking up as many cues as I can for when I do finally get a deal! This year will be my first road rally, I'm very excited!! Congrats on your growing royalties!

[annayarbrough]

Great advice! I really like point #1... sometimes having so many different options on what you could do is overwhelming. I've been doing more of this recently - while slowly branching out into new things - and feeling a lot more in control!

[AdrianaLycette]

Great advice Randon! Looking forward to meeting you this year!

[CharlieErnst]

That's great! Such an inspiring story.

Keep it up!

[arodgers]

Great Story! I'm heading to the rally this year and I can'y wait to take it in!

I'm just wondering how long you typically had to wait to hear from supervisors/libraries/etc when you've had forwards in the past? I've been a member since about June of this year and have had 10 forwards to this point. 3 of those were a country song (the same song 3 times) and the rest were instrumentals. I was lucky enough to hear back from my first forward within about a day and have recently been submitting tracks for that library which I'm happy about but I haven't heard a word from the rest of my forwards. I know this is a common question from members but I'm just wondering if you could share your experience with some of the rookies on here.

Thanks,

Andrew

[randonpurcell]

I don't think there is a good answer to that question. Sometimes you hear back in a day, other times it might be several weeks. And many, many time it may be never.

This is where the write-submit-forget-repeat really comes into play. When you get forwards, just move along. It is exciting, yes, but until you hear from the library/producer it doesn't do you much good right? So, it is best just to move along and keep writing/submitting.

It's easy to get stuck waiting to hear back, checking your email regularly, etc... It's just a distraction you don't need. Move along and keep pitching those same tracks as many times as it makes sense.

In my personal experience, I've generally heard back within a week or two if the library is going to get back to me.

[markhimley]

Glad this got bumped recently - some fresh inspiration going into my first rally!!

Thanks again for sharing, Randon. I hope your success has only continued to gain momentum!

And Andrew, if I may add my .02 with a little perspective from my experience. I once was contacted the day after a forward by a library for a cue that I submitted that I thought was, well, less than my best work to be generous - almost didn't even submit it. But I also somewhat recently had 9 forwards to a single listing; all 9 cues I felt super strongly about, as did the screener as they gave me wonderful feedback and told me they were very impressed - never heard from that library. Point is you never know what's going to happen, the best thing you can do is forget about the forward and just keep writing as much as possible. This is a numbers game for sure

[thegajman]

Thanks Randon ... I can totally relate to your story. I'm still at the "trying to write tracks for a bunch of different genres in the hope that something will eventually come to something!" stage.

I'm hoping my first rally will help me to FOCUS!!!