Episode 09 - Songwriting Session Work and Endorsement Deals

Welcome to our podcast where we delve into the world of songwriting and the music industry. In this episode, we cover everything from songwriting splits and contracts, to the ins and outs of being a session musician. We also discuss how session musicians can approach producers and monetize their work on YouTube.

Part one is here - Episode 8 https://youtu.be/9TEg7EPlkoU

Amy Wadge - https://amywadge.com/

Diane Warren - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nNPmv31fbc

Justin Hawkins RIdes Again - https://www.youtube.com/@JustinHawkinsRidesAgain

Chris Buck - https://www.youtube.com/@ChrisBuckGuitar

Cardinal Black - https://www.youtube.com/@CardinalBlack

Buck and Evans - https://www.buckandevans.com/

Ben Montague - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcPb5kED8zEORDyrNCITNAQ

The Burning Crows - https://www.youtube.com/@TheBurningCrows

VocalZone - https://www.vocalzone.com/ 

This podcast was recorded using Riverside - https://bit.ly/3pcRvni

Download our free bands foundations checklist - http://www.sessionrecall.com/bandchecklist

Join the Session Recall Community - http://www.sessionrecall.com/community

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Nick Flipflop Records - https://www.flipfloprecords.com/

IG - https://www.instagram.com/flipfloprecords

IG - https://www.instagram.com/nickbrine/

Jon IG - https://www.instagram.com/joncon.studio/

YT - https://www.youtube.com/jonconstudio

Transcript

Transcripts have been generated automatically and not checked for errors

09 - Songwriting, Sessions and Monetisation - HD 1080p
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[00:00:00] Jon Con: Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Session Recall podcast. What we're doing today is we're actually just catching up from where we left off from the previous episode. So we're talking about going on to songwriting as musician, another income stream such as session work or working on your own productions, and also just touching on monetization as well as we much for watching.

[00:00:30] Jon Con: And we'll just jump back into where we were from the previous episode. Bye-bye. Just moving away then from saying like the, we're gonna release our music commercially. There's other ways, and obviously thinking about ourselves as musicians, thinking ourselves about artists songwriting camps could be something that.

[00:00:46] Jon Con: people sometimes do. You can see like, you know, like collaborating. So really good example of this in Wales might be Amy Watch. Yeah. Who obviously like Star Cardiff was a solo artist and one of her songs actually ended up being Thinking Out Loud, which she collaborated with on a cheer, working as a songwriting, working on camps, and that's another route that people can take, obviously writing all the time.

[00:01:05] Jon Con: I think it's like Jesse J sat out as that in. son's songwriter working on, um, different pop tracks. Bruno Mars Similar. Who are the most successful songwriter in the world? I think it's Diane Warren. Yeah. And most people haven't heard. No. Then you, you bring up a song list and it's absolutely insane. She's doing Ferris Smith, Bon Jovi, like Tony Braxton, Celine Dion,

[00:01:23] Brino: and everyone.

[00:01:24] Brino: Yeah, and a lot of big artists you think are just artists, but they've written songs. Some of them write songs for lots of other people as well. You wouldn't necessarily know that they write for other people. You just know them as a big artist? Yeah. We work with people, don't we, who they write. Then they work on their songwriting and then they write songs that aren't necessarily in the style that their band would do or they do as an artist.

[00:01:44] Brino: So they don't record them for themselves. But what they do is record those songs for publishing. get other people to do them or get them onto films or get 'em onto adverts or get them as jingles or whatever. And I think honing on your songwriting skills, you don't just have to write just songs that suit, um, you as an artist, you know, that's another way.

[00:02:01] Brino: If you're a good song writer and you're getting some positive feedback on the songs you're writing for your band or for you as a solo artist, then why not progress your songwriting? Be a songwriter as well in parallel to your, yeah. To your. Because it's another, it's another revenue stream. Again, very competitive.

[00:02:16] Brino: But yeah, the songwriting camps. Going on the camps, picking up the tips. Tips, working with people, becoming a better writer, learn how to, maybe you wanna start getting into writing pop stuff or something like that, but you are not necessarily a pop writer. Then learning off guys who do that for a living.

[00:02:28] Brino: Successful guys. So yeah, the workshop's a brilliant way to kind of expand your

[00:02:32] Jon Con: songwriting. And one of the things that would normally happen, I suppose, is then is like if you do go into, then it's thinking about like the contracts that might be in place or thinking about agreements in terms of how. How the song would be split in terms, obviously one of the things that happens, I think mu like the song will get broken up into lyrics and music.

[00:02:48] Jon Con: So it's like, it's normally 50% for the lyrics, 50% for the music. And then it's like sometimes you might need to think about sitting down and working out well, who, what, who did

[00:02:54] Brino: what. Yeah. Do that, do, do that. Very early on it gets messy.

[00:02:58] Jon Con: It's one of the things I've actually mentioned though, we did um, band Foundation's checklist, which you can download for free.

[00:03:03] Jon Con: There's a link in the description, um, in the show notes as well. It was like one of the bands that I worked with is, there's a difference, difference in opinion about who should get what. Cuz you, you have bands like You two where I think everything's split equally between all members. So like lyrics, music and it.

[00:03:16] Jon Con: Yeah. And then I know for an example, like Stereophonics, I know Kelly gets the lyrics and then the music might be split between them. And then in other bands it might be. On a per song basis.

[00:03:26] Brino: Yeah. Yeah. I've seen, obviously, you know, over the years, been working with many, many bands and I've actually sat in on some of the meetings and encouraged them.

[00:03:33] Brino: Really people to talk about 'em have a definitive way. Some bands that you say there's four in a band, they just go, no, everything's split Equally. Someone brings an idea in the rest of the band work on it. The song gets constructed that way. People throw their ideas in. , but then someone might come in with a finished song and the others might not have much input on it, but they're still gonna get 25%.

[00:03:51] Brino: And you can say, well that's not fair, cuz the other guy did all that. But in that deal, that other guy is free to bring his own songs in as well to yeah, get in that, whether it's everyone's getting equally, no matter who does what. But I've sat in on some meetings where everyone literally goes through how many words they wrote, through how many chords, whether someone adjusted a middle eight, and then they work on that and.

[00:04:10] Brino: They end up with crazy splits between us. Someone might get me just just 3% or something, but they do that for every song and other times there's just one songwriting. The band and the rest of the guys in the band are just happy for that one guy and that guy gets everything. That guy gets a hundred percent the publishing.

[00:04:24] Brino: And you can say, well, that's not fair. Well, they're still getting that. Their royalties would being. In the band and the performers, um, and their sales, they're not getting any of the publishing, but they also haven't got any of that pressure of, of, uh, writing successful albums. You know, and you've just, you've done a successful album.

[00:04:39] Brino: You are the one in the studio, day in, day out, making sure it's, it's, uh, how it should be. Then you go on tour, then you come back off tour, which could be 18 months away from friends and family. The rest of the band gonna have a bit of, a bit of a break and you are like, I gotta write the next album. You know, and you can't just turn it, turn it on and flick a switch.

[00:04:56] Brino: No. So it's a lot of work goes into big artists and a lot of stress and a lot of pressure. But getting that in place and or you know, like you say, if someone's usually the chief songwriter, but then someone comes up with a part and comes in the band, then you just go, okay, that's a really good contr contribution to that song.

[00:05:10] Brino: So yeah, there's 10% of the publishing get that written down so you can have a standard contract written up and I'm sure we'll be doing a bit anyway. kind of contracts and splits and everything. Yeah. Uh, we can have a music lawyer in with us who will be online and you'll be able to ask him questions about things like that.

[00:05:25] Brino: And you get, get a standard contract drawn up and then you can just tweak it, then tweak the numbers for what, whatever you wanna do, but do it before it's released, before someone, you know, we're going through it at the moment with one artist. Yeah. And she's having, she's having a nightmare. So it's best to get it all in place written down beforehand.

[00:05:40] Jon Con: Yeah. Songwriting again, it's another way of like, say, say of songwriting in the background. You're not a lead artist, you're not like a featured artist is what it's sometimes called. You don't have to go on tour, but you'll get every time that song gets paid life, if you go back to the performance of the song, you're gonna give that as a royalty.

[00:05:53] Jon Con: So all that's coming in on top of the sales and never, but you don't have to have like that risk of like being like Taylor Swift or whoever. Going out and performing. So like Amy watch doesn't have to go on tour of her cheering, but every time he plays in the festival, she'll get a songwriting

[00:06:05] Brino: royalty from Yeah, she's actually a really good performer as well.

[00:06:07] Brino: And, uh, yeah, he's, she's great, but a great example of someone who's just a brilliant songwriter, brilliant performer as well, but brilliant songwriter and turned her hand to that side. You know, when she start having the success, then realizing, right, okay, we're focusing on the songwriter, getting better as a songwriter, and then yeah, passing that knowledge onto other

[00:06:22] Jon Con: people.

[00:06:23] Jon Con: Yeah. Next. I'm probably gonna combine these two together actually, so that I've got 'em down listed as you've got session work and then possibly then the other option. Then on top of that is producing other people. I think a lot of people might have come through this way of how I started. I was always a musician and then I just used to record the demos before we went in the studio.

[00:06:38] Jon Con: I thought I could do this off. I off. I talked to my own little face. Didn't have clue what I was doing. I started recording, you know, started recording friends for free and stuff. Gradually progressing into producing my own. Mm-hmm. my own studio and everything. What we're seeing now as well, especially in the last, what, two years in terms of covid and like lockdown and remote work.

[00:06:53] Jon Con: And we definitely use quite a few people who are like session players, say really good musician who's being in the studio. If there's somebody really stands out, we might call 'em back in for another. Yeah. If that's a

[00:07:03] Brino: guitar player who's got a unique style, or we saw a drummer do something and then a session comes in, who's looking for a drummer?

[00:07:08] Brino: Yeah. We, we've got a list of people then that we, we've got, that person's gonna be, we're just talking about it before, actually, weren't we? Who was? Gonna be suited to a certain session and why? Um, we came up with a list of names and reasons why, and then we pulled in a whole bandwidth full of session.

[00:07:21] Jon Con: Musicians thing goes back to one of the previous episodes when we were talking about, um, general Ford's Army or Daisy Flame and the Porcelain Cage. Yeah, it's sometimes actually stumble on my own name. . Yeah, then just think, okay, these musicians would be really good. And then with, obviously with technology and stuff now, like recording equipment isn't that expensive.

[00:07:40] Jon Con: So having your own setup at home and if you can record, cause like I know you get stuff sent over all the time. We do a lot of strings remotely, don't we? Yeah, you get a lot of strings remotely. I don't as much

[00:07:49] Brino: the benefits of that. Obviously we've got someone who's really good, who does um, lot of stuff for us, be another great guest to have on actually Andrew Griffiths, not just, is he good and comes up with great parts, whether it's brass or strings or orchestral.

[00:08:00] Brino: You're doing by sending it to him is you're saving on studio time. So when we talked about in podcasts before about the use of studio time and making best use of it, I mean, we can program strings and we can do it, but it, it'll take us a little bit longer than him, but we can come up with the parts. But while you are in somewhere like Rockfield and I'm just sat at a computer doing that, that's eating up valuable studio time in a studio that has big live rooms and nine bedrooms and I'm just sat there on a, on a computer program in strings or whatever.

[00:08:24] Brino: And even if you get a quartet in, that's great to have to have that in. But it's eaten up studio time as. , it's a great experience, but if you don't have the time, then sending it to someone remotely. So if you are good at that and if you are good at speed Detective for drums on Pro Tools, it's a service you can offer.

[00:08:38] Brino: And if you are good at string arrangements, then it's a service you can offer. Cuz it's great for us to be able to send it, we can carry on work, we get them back, we've lost zero time. And the amount of money you've paid is worth it. And you've probably saved more for what you pay for a service like that than the amount of studio.

[00:08:52] Brino: What it's cost you in studio time for a producer, a studio and engineer.

[00:08:55] Jon Con: Yeah. And it is some, and one of the things I recommend for artists is as you're develop. , if you've got a set of where you can do that. I've just been working with someone in Dublin where, um, they're, they're offering now they're offering mixing and like guitar session, playing online, and they're doing it through fiber.

[00:09:09] Jon Con: It, it's something that like, it'll develop over time. But if it's something that like you use as a side gig, a side hustle, if you take that recording rig with you on tour, , there's no reason why you couldn't do someone of the recording on the bus, like, or like when you get to the venue, then I just sat in up, okay, well I just need to record a bit of Qat guitar, like di whatever.

[00:09:24] Jon Con: I can repi record it on the stage and, and the keys as well. Like it's something that if you can do and you, that's like another service you can do from the company, your own home. I know we've done a session, oh, Shirley who came in like gave us a song and we recorded everything. I think I did recording for the keyboards and the bass in my friend's cat's.

[00:09:39] Jon Con: and then send it over to you for adding the extra, the final bits. Yeah. So it, it is something that, um, there, there is, if, if you're in demand, not many people might approach you for playing and if you make a good impression, it's always, again, this idea about networking.

[00:09:51] Brino: Yeah. I think if you've had a really good session, if you're working with a producer, the session's gone well and you are the drummer or something, and it's gone.

[00:09:57] Brino: You know, Darren Re Ryan, you've had really good comments, I think a little bit. Email after the producer, after the album, just saying, Loved working with you. If ever you get a session that I could come in on you looking for a session drum, I'd love to do it. Obviously, you know what, how I play, and then that's in the mind of that producer.

[00:10:10] Brino: Then that's your business card. As you've all, they've already worked with you. They know how fast you work. They know they can throw things at you and you can handle it. So yeah, definitely put your services little email to the producer

[00:10:20] Jon Con: afterwards. As a musician, you can also ask like, testimonial because one, one of the, one of the people we were talking about, I think on one of the sessions is, oh yeah, what about this guy

[00:10:29] Jon Con: He got on a website and my testimonial's from front and center, whatever. I completely forgot I even did it.

[00:10:33] Brino: Yeah. You get a little, you know, put it up on your website, all the people you're working with, every time you go into a studio for your own stuff Yeah. Gets, get whoever's there. This, you know, , the engineer, the producer or whatever.

[00:10:43] Brino: Or if you do a live show, if you're touring with a bigger band, get a get, get a quote off the bigger band, you know? Yeah. What do you think of the show

[00:10:49] Jon Con: content as well? Just film. Just film playing along. Film you like at the gig, the studio. That all re enhance what you're doing. I've seen it a few times where the artists obviously done like the the band and they've got their own little recording set up, and then talking about producing other people in a way.

[00:11:02] Jon Con: You did that a little bit from working at Rockfield. You had your own recording set, you're doing demos. Yeah. And then you were getting called in. In my, my, my path as well. I started out as a musician first, and then kind of fudged together my own approach for recording, kind of taught myself and everything.

[00:11:15] Jon Con: And then if, if you've got a space that you can record with, you might have people going, oh, like if you're recording your ba, your own band, you might get approached by doing other sessions to other people. as a musician today, it's just trying to think about, right, what are my, what are my strands of income?

[00:11:28] Jon Con: Where am I gonna make my money from? What I, it's not just, we're gonna blow up and become massive. We're gonna have a number one hit, but there's like loads of different income streams that we can look at. Can we manage our time? Can we get, can we split this and make it sustainable? Yeah. Cuz

[00:11:39] Brino: people always think about, I need to have another job to sustain my music.

[00:11:42] Brino: But maybe music is that other job. Yeah. You know, and their focus is their music and their band and then working nine to five or whatever to fund it so they get weekends off to play gigs or what. But um, your jobs that, that fund your music can be music. It's, it's tough. Not gonna, you know, there's a lot of lot of people trying to do it and it's tough market, but if you just put your mind to these little bits all add up.

[00:12:03] Brino: Yeah. Cuz the other things as well, like teaching. Yeah. I mean, we know, we work with lots of people don't, that's how they make their money, uh, you know, to subsidize their, their own music is they're teaching in the week or whatever, and they can teach an online or teach an in person. They may be playing in function bands as well because they can go out and do the wedding on a Saturday or whatever and it's 250 quid in their pocket.

[00:12:21] Brino: So yeah. Then they've kind of got a bit more free time to work on their own music cuz they haven't got the constraints of a nine to five job or shift work or anything. And they can do their schedule, their lessons around their, their life and they can. Take gigs at weddings and things like that if they want to, you know, as and when, uh, they need to.

[00:12:38] Brino: Definitely, if you can have a career in music to subsidize your music, then it gives you a bit more flexibility cuz you're your own boss to be able to say, well I can't do that cuz we're on tour with them. Then constantly you need a very understanding boss to get lots of time off

[00:12:49] Jon Con: to. Yeah. Whereas if you're in control, , then you can do that.

[00:12:52] Jon Con: But again, it is work. But then there's always people looking for, like, as a solo artist, you can go out and play during the week. Like my mates play in live lounge in Cardiff, and there, there, there's like a weekly slot at like four o'clock, four till six. And that means they need, they can go off and gig in in the evening or whatever, go out and play in night.

[00:13:07] Jon Con: They normally know their schedule. For some venues, they might know their schedule a year in advance. Yeah. And they can go, right. I, I. Two weeks off to go on tour. I want to have a month here or something. And they, they can do that. And like, there's definitely like a few bands that I know of that they do that they, they've actually used their music to kind of do it.

[00:13:21] Jon Con: Um, yeah, in some way, in some shape or form even it is just go out and do like a show under a different name. Well,

[00:13:27] Brino: I'm gonna be talking to two full-time musicians next week actually on a session that I'm only rockfield. , so I'll be talking to those guys and how they made the switch from having full-time jobs and trying to do their own music on the side to becoming full-time musicians and how they've sustained that, what they've had to do to keep that going.

[00:13:44] Brino: They've been doing that for years now. Now what kind of income they get from it, how many hours they have to work. We'll be talking to 'em about all those things. Yeah. Um, , but for them it was making the leap. But that was the hardest thing. They had a regular job bringing in regular income. And maybe that's, especially if you start having kids and mortgages, that's a godsend.

[00:14:00] Brino: But it was, it was having the confidence in your own ability to make the leap. And then how hard did you have to work? What did you have to do? What did you have to get involved with? Because they both do their own music, but um, , it's not their own music that makes the money, all the other aspects of their musical career that makes the money, but that enables them to also make their own music and tour their own music and be a musician as well.

[00:14:21] Brino: So yeah, we'll be talking to them about all, um, all the aspects of how they made the leap and made it work for them.

[00:14:27] Jon Con: Recap, so we've talked about merchandise, you know, people starting out, um, where the money comes from. We talked about royalties in terms of life performance, songwriting, mechanical royalties, and sound recording.

[00:14:38] Jon Con: Talked a little bit about publishing. I'm talking about songwriting session work, you know? Working as producer potentially, and as Nick said, we'll be looking at going to like interviewing other people for like the future podcasts. The final thing as well, like it's probably the one of the ones that people might think about, first of all, is thinking about like the monetization and brand deals online.

[00:14:58] Jon Con: So the most common one that people might think about is YouTube. So monetizing on YouTube, I think you need 4,000 watch hours and a thousand subscribers. When you say like 4,000 hours of content over the course of a year, it sounds quite a lot. But if you regularly update and put stuff. , it can work really well.

[00:15:13] Jon Con: But then you see artists like, um, you see people like say Chris Buck, who's from South Wales, like, you know, he's been a guitarist in tutorials, videos and stuff. And like you've also done, was it James Hargraves? He did a lot of stuff where he is actually breaking down, like. Content and he's actually doing descriptions and stuff.

[00:15:29] Jon Con: So it's not always just about, you don't have to just go right by my music. It's actually making a show or talking about something that you're interested in. There's quite a few examples of people who are doing that. I know what, like Justin Hawkins is doing is, um, YouTube and like he's being supported by Patriot

[00:15:43] Brino: He's really, yeah. Following videos. He's so, he's so good on there, isn't he? Yeah. Um, you know, it's, it's informative, it's funny, it's witty, it's very intelligent and it's in depth when it needs to be. Yeah. He's doing. Brilliant, brilliant

[00:15:55] Jon Con: channel. Yeah. And like, and then Chris, I know when he started out he was doing a lot of um, guitar reviews, a lot of like techniques and breakdowns, how to play this, how to do that.

[00:16:03] Jon Con: And obviously he had his band on the side as well, like back in Evans gig. And obviously he used to go touring and managing and obviously he's doing Cardinal Black as well. And I think Cardinal Black of really, really tight, really good bands. But all the work that Chris has done in advance, obviously that's helped.

[00:16:16] Jon Con: In a way help him establish Yes, and like, and he's had like a team of people, but like it's that support from what he's been doing and it's not something that's happened overnight. This is like a long tail kind of idea. It's been a good few years. I've, I mean I've known Chris now about four or five years maybe.

[00:16:30] Jon Con: And it is not something that's just, just happens. He's just become being, get a hundred thousand subscribers. It's something that's gradually. Evolved and it's just kind of grown exponentially when you're starting out. Think about it. Think about what can you do that provides information and value to someone else, but not just go like, here's my track, and then just expect to get like monetized straight away.

[00:16:47] Jon Con: As you develop your brand and as you develop like your following on, on these, on all these plats, developing yourself as an artist, you might find it like, people start approaching you to like say, would you be interested in doing like guitar endorsement or something? You might get some free equipment or something like that, or like the string endorsement one is normally pretty common as well.

[00:17:03] Jon Con: So it's like all these things that as you're developing and building, you can kind of get, you can get these like endorsement deals in place and then you might get invited out to. Like trade shows with the band to kind of perform as well. And that can all enhance your profile.

[00:17:15] Brino: Yeah, and it all add, it all adds up.

[00:17:16] Brino: You know, if you can get symbol deals or stick deals or string deals, like say it's money, you don't have to spend, technically, it's another form of income, cuz you've gotta spend that money if you're a tour musician or a recording musician. Yeah. So, yeah, if you can, and then

[00:17:27] Jon Con: you might get featured on the adverts as well, so they, they might actually pay for you to be in the magazine.

[00:17:31] Jon Con: I remember like, no, the artists I worked with in Rockfield, I said Ben Monte. He had like headphone endorsement deal, and I remember opening up magazines, oh, that's Ben . He hasn't had to pay for that, but, but they'll put a little link or something to him. Yeah, through his profile. And then I know like Whips, like Burning Crows had like, um, is it vintage?

[00:17:46] Jon Con: Yeah,

[00:17:46] Brino: vintage guitars. Yeah. And then, and don't forget his vocal zone endorsement as well.

[00:17:49] Jon Con: Yes, he does have a vocal zone endorsement and they had like string endorsement deals as well. and all those things help artists and everything, but it's something that as you're building and developing it, it'll be something that to think about, this is what we'd like in our goal.

[00:17:59] Jon Con: It's like where do we see ourselves in five years time? Having that plan and then might be able to like work backwards and build it from that. I think that kind of covers most of the things. Is there anything else that we can add to this, Nick? Not that we're

[00:18:09] Brino: not gonna cover in, um, other. Podcasts and courses that we're gonna be doing in interviews.

[00:18:14] Brino: Cool. Let's go in some money, John. Yeah, let's

[00:18:17] Jon Con: go in money. So as I mentioned earlier on, we've got a checklist available for you to download. Its completely free. It's session record.com/ I'll put the link. I can't remember. Bann checklist, band checklist. There it is. Oh God, I can't even read my thing. It was right next to it.

[00:18:32] Jon Con: So session recall slash band checklist that's free is a PDF guide. It's a couple of lessons and stuff that'll come through on your email. So check. Have a look at it and it's just basically expanding a little bit more on what we talked about today. Um, thank you very much, Nick, and I'll see you all again next time.