You Never Know What The Tide Will Bring
As a musician, I was not born with a natural talent for marketing or sales. I do believe that a lot of musicians share this situation with me. I have witnessed wicked talented musicians completely give up on making a living from their natural art because they just don’t know how to market. I know that I have had several points in my life that I started thinking that maybe I should just do music for fun or for a release and not try to make money from it. I started making excuses like “if I do it for a living it will not be fun or fulfilling for me anymore, it will just turn in to mundane work”.
After so many failed attempts to make decent money from my music I started to believe that I just wasn’t good enough to do it. Of course all my family and friends were telling me that I was definitely good enough to earn millions of dollars with my music. They would always tell me how great my music is and how much they love to listen to it. I always thought they were just saying that because they wanted to support me even if my music wasn’t great.
Then I caught a break. It came right at the time I needed it most because I was starting down that road of considering quitting music for good. I saw on Twitter that a company called Gateway Records was putting together compilation albums of independent artists. I contacted the CEO and asked how I could submit a track or two and then went and did it.
At that time they had five different albums in the works. I submitted tracks to 4 of them thinking that the more music I submit, the better chances I would have to get on one of their records.
I hadn’t heard anything back from them for what seemed like a long time and I had forgotten about the whole thing. Then one day I was sitting behind my drum set, taking a break from the exhilarating jam session I was having. I pulled out my phone to see if my wife had texted or called me. She didn’t so out of habit I checked my email. I saw a message from Gateway Records. I opened the message with the expectation that it would say thanks but no thanks.
Here is a copy of the email:
Hey Eric,
My team circulated your submissions this week, and the consensus is that we’d LOVE to have the “Battle Rap” song on the upcoming Ultimate EDM, Vol. 2.
Below is some additional information about the project. Please look this over and let me know your thoughts from there.
Additional Info:
We’re currently compiling an album called Ultimate EDM, Vol. 2. It’ll be an amazing collection of EDM tracks, showcasing the top unsigned and independent producers out there making killer electronic music. We want you to be represented… and we think you would be great on this. We prefer to work with previously unreleased songs if you have one. It gives your existing fans something to get excited about, and gives us the best chance to work something new. Volume 1 in this amazing new series was released several months ago and has achieved more than 135k streams on Spotify alone. There’s been a great deal of excitement about this, and our hope would be that volume two builds on that success and creates even more attention and excitement for your music.
Founded in 1961, and relaunched in 2018 as the only all-compilation record label in the world, Gateway Records is unique amongst its peers. We work hard to create well-curated collections of music that foster artist discovery, and give the most loyal of music fans a place to find new favorites.
If you’d like to be included on the album, please shoot me a note back. We have a very simple license agreement you’ll need to sign. We DO NOT take away copyright rights to your music, we simply license it for use on our project. If the project does well, you are paid a flat fee for your participation. If the project does really well, you get paid even more. It’s a very simple system. We ask that you participate in marketing the album when it is released, and we’ll provide you with graphics and other things to do that. We’ll be working hard to create tons of interest in the project, and marketing it right alongside you. It will be distributed globally via our partners at The Orchard.
I look forward to talking with you more about this project. We think you’ll enjoy being a part of it.
Thanks in advance for your consideration,
Scott Thomas
CEO / Gateway Records
I couldn’t believe it. They wanted MY track on their upcoming album. In later conversations with Scott Thomas, he told me that the track was so strong that they were considering leading the album with it by making it the first track. (You know, the one that EVERYBODY listens to in order to find out if they will like the album)
MIND BLOWN
At that point I realized that all the negative stuff I was feeling about my music was just the noise I was creating in my head because I was afraid to try to be a success. I was afraid because I didn’t want to deal with the potential rejection. I was standing in my own way and sabotaging myself. I have gotten way over that now.
At the time of this writing I am launching massive marketing campaigns for my EP “Tripwire” I have learned a lot about sales and self promotion from taking the Clickfunnels 30 Day OFA Challenge. I’ll provide a link to that at the bottom of this blog post if you’re interested in joining that. I hightly recommend it for anyone trying to do any kind of sales or marketing online.
Please understand that I don’t write all this to brag about what has happened to me. Believe me, there was a lot of blood, sweat, tears, pain, disappointment, and just downright bad feelings that I had to go through to even make it that far in my journey. I’m just a regular guy with a solid dream and a LOT of determination.
The point of this whole story is that it is important to not give up on your dreams even when you are at the lowest point in your life and you’re starting to feel like there’s just no hope in accomplishing your goals. The Universe works in strange ways sometimes. I always love to quote what Tom Hanks’ character said to his friend after he had been rescued from the island.
“I just felt like I had to keep on breathing. You never know what the tide will bring tomorrow”
Until next time!
OFA Challenge link: https://www.funnelchallenge.com?cf_affiliate_id=2752450&affiliate_id=2752450
You can catch me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eric.ward.making.music
Twitter: @EricManuelWard
Instagram: @EricManuelWard
