Want to write a hit song? What are your peeps listening to?

Some great advoce I picked up somewhere was that if you want to write a hit song, you need to know what people are listening to. Whilst its true that there are song pluggers and the radio is very much influenced by the record companies, the fact is that if he radio are regularly playing songs, whether it is because they have an incentive or for any other reason, the net result is people listen to them.

I think it was Jimmy Webb at the S3 conference who said that if you listen to a song at least 5 times, it will grow on you and you will start to like it. This is a formula that they use to get you to buy or follow a track. The lyrics become familiar, the hook becomes entrenched in your mind and if it is pleasing to you, you may well find yourself singing along.

Hit’s are here the money is in songwriting. If you write a hit song, you will be well remunerated and also you will become noticed and in demand by artists and their team, looking for a new song, hoping that you weren’t a one hit wonder.

So is there a magical secret? Magical no, but the key thing is knowing what people like, what are they listening to today. It’s easy to find a market for your songs in today’s world with so many internet vehicles like MySpace, FaceBook, iTunes, Music Forte and hundreds if not thousands of others. But these are less likely to get you a hit for music’s sake, than the radio, which isn’t going away anywhere fast. Radio plays mainstream and mainstream is what it means, i.e. what most people are listening to today.

So in my humble opinion, if you want to write a hit song, rather than (as Ralph Murphy says) be a self indulgent songwriter, writing songs to play in bars after 10 P.M. when people are drunk or t least merry and mostly don’t care, you need to write something different. Something uplifting, which is often very different to what the average songwriter puts together. Murphy says that the hits are the songs that people listen to on the way to work in the morning when they want a lift.

So the first thing to do is to find out what they are listening to. I live in New Zealand, so if I want to write a hit song for the local market, I would go to RIANZ. “The Recording Industry Association of New Zealand Inc (RIANZ) is a non-profit organisation representing major and independent record producers, distributors and recording artists throughout New Zealand.”

RIANZ publishes the weekly New Zealand Top 40 Singles Chart. “The Top 40 Singles Chart is compiled based on a 75:25 split between physical / digital singles sales figures and radio play information gathered by radio data collection agency Radioscope.”They also publish a number of other charts including the Top 10 Radio Airplay Chart.

Like all charts they show the position this week, last week and weeks on the chart. A quick look through these will tell you what is popular in your local world. These charts are a mixture of everything, local and international. To give you an idea, the Top 40 as at Monday 28 July included 5 local acts and Number One on the chart was Phil Collins, In The Air Tonight which this time has been on the NZ charts for 21 weeks! Always on My Mind by Tiki Taane is number 3 still and has been on the charts for 14 weeks.

In my opinion, Always On My Mind is very much a polynesian sound and will be hugely popular locally with our youth and with a reggae flavour has some legs internationally, but I can’t see it being on the charts at Billboard, the other place I look to see what is popular, especially on the Country Charts because Country Music has a huge following in the USA, my major songwriting target market.

So now you know what people are listening to on the radio and what they are buying. What do you do next? Subscibe to my blog and I will tell you more, this isn’t a book after all lol.

If you think this blog is helpful, tell a friend. If you want to hear some of my songs, check out my MySpace page. Oh and please do leave a comment. Is my blog intesting? Is it helpful? Are there things you would like me to write about?

While this blog is starting to get a good following, I would love to get more readers and encouraging me to keep writing. If you feel that my blog is interesting I would be very grateful if you would vote for me in the category of best blog at the NetGuide Web Awards. Note that the form starts each site with www whereas my blog doesn’t and is of course https://luigicappel.wordpress.com.

Thanks so much for your support:)

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Liverpool 8 watch a 65 year old innovate

Last night I saw Ringo Starr on the Late Show, playing the lead song to his new album Liverpool 8.

Here’s what’s different. The album is a 2GB Flash Drive embedded into a rubber bracelet, of course the name of the album is on the bracelet and the price is around the same as any new album. $20 from memory. As well as the album the contents include a music video, interviews, photos and more.

If you buy the album, you will probably want to wear it because it is novel and this being the first time it has been done (to my knowledge) it will become a colectors item. This could become the ultimate fashion wear for 2008. What are you listening to? Check it out on my wrist. The only drawback is that you can’t plug it into your car stereo or your iPod, but that will no doubt come if the concept takes off.

Storing multiple albums could be a bit of a problem, but I’m sure there will be appropriate refinements.

About 8 years ago I tried to get the local media to publish a story I wrote, saying that if the music industry doesn’t take care of their music buying public and take advantage of the capabilities of new media such as adding video, interviews, photos etc to albums, they will have a hard time competing with downloads. But if they add so much material (that they have anyway and don’t generally sell) so that it isn’t worth the hassle or cost of downloading everything, they will be in trouble.

The media didn’t want my story because it was controversial and probably because a lot of there advertising revenue came from the record companies. Hey guess what, yeah I was right. Now I’m not super clever, I’m just being logical. I think the record companies were arrogant and had the attitude of some Japanese manufacturers of a decade ago, who said to their customers, we will tell you what features you want on your products and how to use them, but that’s another story.

The point is, we are in the world of new media. Consumers have loads of choices. BUT, they are prepared to pay for value. EMI, Sony etc. if you want to keep your market, you need to give value. If you don’t you may just find that you aren’t needed or wanted any more. It’s not too late, but you need to understand, its not just about the media you print your music on, it’s about being innovative, listening to your customers and being innovative, fun, inspiring, sticky and giving value for money.

Instead of sacking your staff, sacking your entertainers and making them do their own promotion, how about talking to them.  There’s a novel idea. Here’s the question. It’s 2010 and the music industry as we knew it has collapsed. It has taken with it major printing companies, media companies, wholesalers and retailers and increased unemployment noticeably. If you were able to go back to 2008, what would you do differently?