It's been almost a month since my last entry.  So let me give you a little update on what's been going on.  Admittedly I haven't done a whole heck of a lot with music licensing, but I've been busy with my band, Brother Howe (we had a show, a contest, and have released a new maxi-single) and also with my other blog IHateDaveGrohl.com, which has been fun for me.  Regardless, I've let these things get in the way, but at least it can't be said that I'm lazy. 

So the challenge last time was that I contacted my contact at BMI asking for their film and tv department.  A few days later he DID respond with an email address for their film and tv department and a phone number.  I sent an email in asking them what resources they had for one of their members.  That was over three weeks ago, so I think they're blowing me off.  Looks like I'll have to make phone call.

Another challenge was that I had put together an email to send out to music supervisors and to begin sending it out.  I procrastinated and procrastinated and finally this morning sent out eight emails, two of which came back as undeliverable.  I tried personalizing them a little bit.  For example, I sent an email in to America's Funniest Home Videos in which I made a suggestion (something like, "I think this song would work well for a montage of people running into things or being dizzy") and then I included a link in the email which plays the song immediately if they click it using Tunepak from Reverbnation.  We'll see if that approach works or not. 

And finally, I had put together a list of four local ad agencies.  However, I have yet to call them. 

So the challenge last time was to contact someone at BMI to find out what they have in regards to a Film and TV department and what that department can do for me in helping get my music on tv shows and into films.  Update:  I sent an email early yesterday morning to the one and only contact I have at BMI and am waiting for a response. We'll see if they're blowing me off.  All right, one item checked off

Another challenge was to draft an email that I can send to Music Supervisors, asking them to add me to their email list when searching for music for their projects.  Update: I have an email drafted.  Now comes the hard part (for me anyway): sending the emails out.  I think it's a pretty good email, but I don't know for sure, you know?  Is it professional enough and will it do what it's intended to do?  What I plan on doing is sending the emails, then following up with phone calls a few days or a week later.

The last challenge was to research local ad agencies about using my music in their projects.  I procrastinated on this, but I did a quick Google search this morning on agencies in my own town only.  I came up with four and put their contact information in a spreadsheet.  I think that's a good amount to start with and perhaps get some feedback from them.  To be honest, I don't know if this will bear any fruit or not, but it's something I thought of for Making Money with your Music so I'll let you know if it's worthwhile.

Since Wednesday (two days ago), I've boughten the Film & Television Music Guide by Ritch Esra and Stephen Trumbull at www.musicregistry.com for $100.  I spent some time last night perusing it and I'm impressed. I think it's worth the money.  Tons of contacts for Music Supervisors, Publishers, Recording Studios, etc.  I should be set to go.  I also spent some time this morning crafting an email that I can send to people looking for music, such as music supervisors, music placement companies and movie trailer companies.  I need to spend some more time on it, but here's the thing.  All this stuff takes time.  I have very little time.  If I can make this work on the little time I have to work on it, then anyone can do it. 

That means I have to be very careful to carve out some time in my life, and then spend that time working on the very few and essential things that will have the greatest impact in achieving my goals.  For example,

I've outlined my guide, Making Money with your Music kind of like building a house.  First you have to lay the foundation.  This means getting everything ready, which includes copyrighting your songs, making music library cd's, registering with a performance rights organization and setting up your business with a website, email and phone. 

That sounds like a lot, and it does take a little bit of work, but it's not really that bad if taken step by step.  I plan to go into more detail on each of these subjects in the future, but for now I just want to document what I've been doing the past few days and what my next steps are. 

Success!  Sort of.  After a few more hours of searching and programming, I have resorting to using Tunepaks on Reverbnation as the media player to use on my music licensing page.  This wasn't the ideal situation because I wanted to embed the players right on the page, but with Tunepaks you can't do that for some reason. So, I have a list of songs, and if you want to listen and download, you have to click a link which will open the music player in a new window.  Not ideal like I said, but I'm sick of not getting this done and it will work for now and it will work fairly well.

The nice thing about the Tunepaks is that the songs can be downloaded right from there.  There is also a "lyrics" link.  I put short song descriptions and the lyrics to the songs there.  At least for the songs I uploaded today specifically for this.  For some reason, however, and I'm not sure why, the lyrics link doesn't seem to be working today from the Tunepak itself.  But if you follow the link to my Arist Page, the lyrics can be opened from there.  Maybe I should contact Reverbnation and find out if there is a bug or something. 

To view the page, go to http://www.brotherhowe.com/musiclicensing

Well, I'm trying to update my website to create a "professional" presence for music licensing.  The idea is to have a page on your site where you can send someone to listen to your music and decide if it's right for their tv show, movie, video game or whatever. It's a lot quicker than mailing someone a cd, which you can do also. 

So my big thing today, which is taking hours and hours is figuring out how to embed a music player on my website.  I want to have three music players, one for each style of music (country punk, punk and slow & moody).  However, the internet is giving me fits, so I think this is going to take a little longer than I planned on. 

I'll keep pressing on though, and get this thing figured out.

Okay, well, as it says to the right, I did get a song onto a TV show and I learned everything I could about music licensing.  I also devoted February of 2009 to write everything I learned down and organize it into a system that I or anyone else could follow to establish a successful music licensing career.  However, I haven't focused myself on starting that yet because I wanted to focus on getting our new album finished so I would have some newer songs to promote.  Some of the songs on the first Brother Howe album sound great and they all sound pretty good.  However, I wanted to have some newer stuff that was professionally mixed and mastered to submit to TV shows and movies.  Here's the thing.  These things always tend to take longer than you think don't they?  I do have three songs complete though and two more almost finished, so we're well on the way and I'll be releasing an EP here soon. But here I am 10 months later without the album complete and without anything in the works as far as music licensing goes. 

So now I say, screw it!  Let's get this party started anyway.  A new year's coming up and I've got a job to do.  I'm gonna follow my guide and see how well it works.  I honestly believe in it.  I really do.  I think it's the best thing out there compared to what I've found so far on the subject and I just need to prove it. 

Here's some more reasoning behind starting this even though I"m not done with a new album.  I believe it's never the exact right time to start anyway.  I think that it might detract from the focus that it will give me an excuse to contact music supervisory and such periodically and let them know what I'm working on, which will build relationships.  And I think if I do this here, it'll hold me accountable to keep things going.  I don't know about you, but I have a hard time sticking with stuff consistently.

So subscribe to the RSS feed and follow along, this should be interesting.

If you have any quesitons about the guide, music licensing in general or whatever, please leave them here. This will be our way of generating a Frequently Asked Questions section.