In an act of generosity, songwriter Andrea Stolpe asked me to explain how I put together the videos for 'My Beautiful Friend' and 'All the Good Men.' Here's the piece, which she ran on her Berklee blog. It starts with Andrea's intro. A fellow writer and blog reader of mine recently brought to my attention a valuable and artful marketing tool he uses to promote his songwriting. Always in the mood for new ways to spark my own creativity and suggestions on how to reach more lovers of music, I asked Dave to share in detail about his experience with this tool. He was kind enough to oblige. As he explains, one marketing tool alone grows stale and ineffective after too much use, but a multi-pronged approach can be just what we need to keep fans following our latest music and entice new listeners to get on board. Read below how Dave Shiflett brought new sparkle and ‘vision’ with videography to some of his original songs. -Andrea Stolpe If you’re a member of the vast unknown horde of songwriters, the big trick is getting recording artists, music supervisors, or publishers to actually listen. My experience as an unknown has been that getting someone to agree to listen to a song is not a huge problem. Yet my assumption is that much of the time, if not most of the time, the song never gets listened to. . Recently, I tried a new approach that seems to have vastly expanded the listener-ship for two songs I’ve been circulating for over a year. I created videos on my computer to “illustrate” the songs. Early indications are that videos greatly increase chances of getting heard. I had never made a video before. I’m a world-class computer klutz. Besides that, I’m not a photographer or videographer. So, if I can do this, anyone can. The first video was for a song called “All the Good Men.” This is a “reality of war” song based on my experience as the father of a soldier. Grim material, to be sure, but I really believe in the song and the recording, which was done in a studio. I had sent the song around and had small success with some folk DJs. But for the most part there was very little response from music industry “weasels” (Eric Beall’s excellent term). So, I decided to try to make the package more appealing by creating a video, even though I had no idea how to proceed or little money to spend. Fortunately, I discovered that my computer, which runs on Windows XP, includes a video-making program called Movie Maker. Even better, the program is made for idiots like me. Best yet, making the videos hasn’t cost a cent. Without even reading the tutorial I soon figured out how to import a copy of my song to Movie Maker and begin adding visual material to accompany the music. This particular song tells the story of a soldier’s body coming home in a flag-draped coffin. I went online and found a couple of sites that offer free photographs, including a source for U.S. government photos (http://www.unclesamsphotos.com) and another site that offers thousands of photos in the public domain. (http://people.uwec.edu/koroghcm/public_domain.htm). After a few minutes of trial and error I began transferring a wide selection of photos to my computer and began matching them to the lyrics. Within a few hours, I had a pretty good video, which you can check out at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuySpA6wuvQ. I posted the video on YouTube – which is very computer-idot friendly – and sent out emails to friends and music-industry contacts directing them to the site. The response has been encouraging. I have heard from people who never responded when I had sent the songs – when requested — on CDs or had sent along links to sites where they are posted. In another interesting response, a DJ got back in touch to say he was so taken by the video that he went to my songwriting site (http://www.Daveshiflett.com), downloaded the song and played it on his show that week. I’m assuming a few people stumbled across the video on their own, yet I never did anything to promote it. Getting lots of hits isn’t the mission. Getting the “right” hits is. Within a couple of days, I had more viewers than had been on the original email list, suggesting that most of those I contacted had bothered to view the video, and perhaps suggest it to friends and contacts. I also created a free widget with ReverbNation, which is quickly approaching the number of hits the songs have gotten on Myspace over the course of a year. A few weeks later I made another video (which, as it turns out, I like even more) about a song called “My Beautiful Friend.” This is a song about going through hard times, so I went back to the public domain site and found a huge collection of photos from the depression (see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOE8sCmWeIQ). In another interesting response, a label titan to whom I had send a CD copy of the song many months ago, responded almost instantly to say how much he had enjoyed the song and video. It was clear he had never gotten around to spinning the CD. Of course, none of this guarantees anything more will happen with these songs, but at least the songs are being heard. My only note of caution would be to make sure you don’t overuse the video option. All things grow old. Choose your songs carefully, and try to make sure the video is at least as compelling as your tune. Perhaps a rule of thumb should be this: Think two or three times before submitting any song you wouldn’t spend a few extra hours turning into a video.
