Singer/Songwriter

by Dave Blackledge

 

 Surviving on Fluff & Ramen Noodles

 

   The dictionary describes “fluff” as: Something of little substance or consequence, especially:_ a. Light or superficial entertainment: “The movie was just another bit of fluff from Hollywood” _b. Inflated or padded material: “The report was mostly fluff, with little new information.”

   You can use these definitions of “fluff” as great songwriting and promotional tools.  In regards to definition (a.) you can write lyrics that are just a silly use of alliterations, pop culture lingo, ooohs and ahhs and copy subjects of current popular hit songs. Regarding definition (b.) use fluff to pad your website and press kit with a lot of “sort of true” poppycock that you wrote yourself. This one has worked particularly good for me.  I find it quite challenging to fabricate how things I’ve done may be some sort of musical business accomplishment.  Like using “awards” I’ve won which were actually just daily voting on a website.  I was once voted in the top 5 bands in Pennsylvania for a year by a website while I was just playing solo comedy crap. Now if that isn’t funny, what is?  Somehow I did get a thrill out of it though. I’m such a goofball.  All it meant was that I had more friends with nothing better to do than to log on and vote for me every day.  So, I guess that really is something...only 4 bands in the state had more friends without lives.  I guess the really funny thing here is, the song that most people were voting for me for was titled “I Got A Life, But It Sucks.”

    With a little practice, you too can learn how to make silly claims using terms like “A music publisher published my songs” (which usually means nothing more than “If anyone ever records or uses any of my songs, I’m going to give half of the royalties to Gotcha/Dunne Music Publishers.”  Or you can claim “I have my own music publishing company” which means “I don’t know anything about the music business but this makes me sound like I do.”  Or you can say “I signed with a music management company to handle my music affairs” instead of saying  “I asked my cousin Sam to ask around and try to get me gigs at some of the bars he goes to.”

   Bottom Line: While Music Publishers pitch your songs for you....you have to have a REAL music publisher who knows how to pitch to people willing to catch.  And good luck finding a real music publisher willing to give a listen to your songs.  It’s a tough, tough road.  On the other hand, I’ve actually seen ads and Myspace pages of supposed Music Publishers that advertise “Send Me Your Poems...We can put the words to music and we’ll make a fortune together.”  Right!  If you don’t get red flags from ads like that, you might want to stay off the internet.  Poems do NOT make good song lyrics in most cases since poetry tends to be too abstract and not directly telling a story.

   But I guess we all have to face it someday.  No matter how much fluff we put on our sites, or how many claims we can make about hanging out with stars or opening for someone who opened for Dwight Yoakum once. Again, the bottom line is, are you actually making any money on your songs?  While there is nothing wrong with writing for fun or just playing your own songs at your gigs and selling some CD’s of your own music; there is no need for the fluff in these cases.  Sell some CD’s, play a few $200 gigs and stock up on Ramen noodles.  Be a cult hero.  You’ll be okay.

    I sent an email to BMI.  I hadn’t received my royalty check for the quarter.  Not three months, I mean 25 cents.  They wrote me back and said they can’t be bothered with tracking and paying out small amounts.  Oh, I didn’t know they were such “big shots” at BMI, well, excuse me, I thought ASCAP was supposed to be the snobs.  So I wrote them a nasty email about how they only care about the big artists who get the big $100 royalty checks and they don’t give a hoot about us little people.  Actually, I did some checking on royalty payments and found that they don’t send royalty checks out under $10 per year, and they don’t carry it forward. If you rack up a giant $9 royalty for the year, they keep it all.   This was the final line of their email to me “Due to the cost of distributing negligible royalties, if the total amount of royalties earned from all sources in any calendar year is less than $10.00, no payment will be made and no royalty statement will be rendered.”  “Negligible”  they say.

   Do you know how many packs of Ramen noodles a songwriter can buy with that nine bucks? Songwriters have been known to live on just Ramen noodles for years.  Let’s see 5 packs for a dollar times 9 equals 45 packs.  There’s a month of good eating right there.