j.troup
New member
Okay...
There's been alot of discussion about "pay for submission" service offerings on FP. Although some are quite different, they all tend to get lumped into the same category by the majority of their target audience...(PMP, iStandard, Dynamic Producer, Taxi, etc, etc). There are alot of reputable services out there, but there are also alot of scams.
I wanted to give my take on the latest to pop up on FP's radar, Blazetrak.
Blazetrak is co-founded by Ron Harrison, the brother of Rich Harrison, who's credits include (but are not limited to) Beyonce's Crazy In Love. A high level overview of how the service works, is, for a submission fee, your track/song is reviewed by an industry professional of your choice, and a video feedback response from this industry professional is given to you.
The industry professionals range from (on the urban side) Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins, Boi-1da, Teddy Riley, etc. The submission fee also varies, depending on the industry professional you choose to review your music, ranging from $25 per submission, to $150 per submission.
Blazetrak posts numerous successful connections, including users making successful connections to Rodney Jerkins, Midi Mafia, Boi-1da, and Infinity.
There the official overview of the company. Now, here's my opinion...
At first, I was dead set against paying ANYTHING to submit your tracks. I was of the opinion, "why pay a middle man, when you can do it directly yourself". This was before I experienced the sheer VOLUME of people trying to do the same thing. A&R's, artists and managers are BOMBARDED with any and every Tom, Dick and Harry, submitting their "audio lottery ticket", for a chance at fame and fortune. and 99.9% of the submissions are garbage...AND never get listened to.
A majority of FP also shares that sentiment. They'll NEVER pay for ANYTHING...ESPECIALLY a submission. They won't even pay for the software that they make their music on!!
My latest trip out to LA turned on a lightbulb for me. I went out to LA for the ASCAP "I Create Music" expo. My sole purpose for going was to get the music I was creating with a few artists, into the hands of as many people as I could...
Basically I went to submit music.
Now the costs for this trip to LA were....
$500 - Airfare
$800 - Hotel
$200 - Food
$200 - Custom pressed CD's
$200 - Misc Expenses
$200 - Conference Admission
-----------------------------------
$2,100 GRAND TOTAL.
Now...although the ASCAP conference was a phenomenal experience which taught me ALOT, I didn't really get to hand the music to as many people as i would have liked...DEFINITELY not $2,100 worth.
And then it hit me...I just spent over $2000 to fly to LA to submit music. Not only that, I've done same type of thing NUMEROUS times over the course of my pursuits. I've spent...
$500 - $1500 on 5 or so trips to NYC to meet with various industry personnel
$500 - $2000 each, on 3 separate trips to LA.
$1500 each on 2 trips to music conferences (Including One Stop Shop)
One of my most recent trips saw me flying to LA for 24 hours, to attend a after Grammy Party I had been invited to, because some big names were going to be in attendance.
So that's almost $10,000 spent, all in the pursuit of SUBMITTING MUSIC. Not to mention, there's no guarantee that ANY of my music will EVER be heard by ANYONE!!
So here's Blazetrak. They're saying that for $25 - $150...we GUARANTEE your music will be heard by the industry professional of YOUR CHOICE! Not only that, this person will record a VIDEO RESPONSE to your music.
So I can pay $2000 for the CHANCE to POSSIBLY get my music into someone's hands...or I can pay $150 for the GUARANTEE that my music will get listened to by the person that I choose, AND they will give me a video response to my music!
Now granted...I do see the industry professionals that Blazetrak offers as my COMPETITION. Meaning that I'm trying to get the same dollars that they are trying to get. And I understand that they will NEVER push me to be bigger than they are...the best I can hope for is to work FOR them, in order to make THEM more money. They aren't interested in making me a star...they are interested in how they can leverage my work to make THEM bigger stars.
But if your goal is to connect with the big name stars and work with them on producing/writing records for the big named artists, BlazeTrak seems to me to be a no brainer. It's guaranteed that your track will get to the person that you want it to get to, and you'll get the feedback that you are looking for.
Blazetrak has my stamp of approval. If you want to get your tracks to the professionals, and get feedback from them, this is the way to do it.
There's been alot of discussion about "pay for submission" service offerings on FP. Although some are quite different, they all tend to get lumped into the same category by the majority of their target audience...(PMP, iStandard, Dynamic Producer, Taxi, etc, etc). There are alot of reputable services out there, but there are also alot of scams.
I wanted to give my take on the latest to pop up on FP's radar, Blazetrak.
Blazetrak is co-founded by Ron Harrison, the brother of Rich Harrison, who's credits include (but are not limited to) Beyonce's Crazy In Love. A high level overview of how the service works, is, for a submission fee, your track/song is reviewed by an industry professional of your choice, and a video feedback response from this industry professional is given to you.
The industry professionals range from (on the urban side) Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins, Boi-1da, Teddy Riley, etc. The submission fee also varies, depending on the industry professional you choose to review your music, ranging from $25 per submission, to $150 per submission.
Blazetrak posts numerous successful connections, including users making successful connections to Rodney Jerkins, Midi Mafia, Boi-1da, and Infinity.
There the official overview of the company. Now, here's my opinion...
At first, I was dead set against paying ANYTHING to submit your tracks. I was of the opinion, "why pay a middle man, when you can do it directly yourself". This was before I experienced the sheer VOLUME of people trying to do the same thing. A&R's, artists and managers are BOMBARDED with any and every Tom, Dick and Harry, submitting their "audio lottery ticket", for a chance at fame and fortune. and 99.9% of the submissions are garbage...AND never get listened to.
A majority of FP also shares that sentiment. They'll NEVER pay for ANYTHING...ESPECIALLY a submission. They won't even pay for the software that they make their music on!!
My latest trip out to LA turned on a lightbulb for me. I went out to LA for the ASCAP "I Create Music" expo. My sole purpose for going was to get the music I was creating with a few artists, into the hands of as many people as I could...
Basically I went to submit music.
Now the costs for this trip to LA were....
$500 - Airfare
$800 - Hotel
$200 - Food
$200 - Custom pressed CD's
$200 - Misc Expenses
$200 - Conference Admission
-----------------------------------
$2,100 GRAND TOTAL.
Now...although the ASCAP conference was a phenomenal experience which taught me ALOT, I didn't really get to hand the music to as many people as i would have liked...DEFINITELY not $2,100 worth.
And then it hit me...I just spent over $2000 to fly to LA to submit music. Not only that, I've done same type of thing NUMEROUS times over the course of my pursuits. I've spent...
$500 - $1500 on 5 or so trips to NYC to meet with various industry personnel
$500 - $2000 each, on 3 separate trips to LA.
$1500 each on 2 trips to music conferences (Including One Stop Shop)
One of my most recent trips saw me flying to LA for 24 hours, to attend a after Grammy Party I had been invited to, because some big names were going to be in attendance.
So that's almost $10,000 spent, all in the pursuit of SUBMITTING MUSIC. Not to mention, there's no guarantee that ANY of my music will EVER be heard by ANYONE!!
So here's Blazetrak. They're saying that for $25 - $150...we GUARANTEE your music will be heard by the industry professional of YOUR CHOICE! Not only that, this person will record a VIDEO RESPONSE to your music.
So I can pay $2000 for the CHANCE to POSSIBLY get my music into someone's hands...or I can pay $150 for the GUARANTEE that my music will get listened to by the person that I choose, AND they will give me a video response to my music!
Now granted...I do see the industry professionals that Blazetrak offers as my COMPETITION. Meaning that I'm trying to get the same dollars that they are trying to get. And I understand that they will NEVER push me to be bigger than they are...the best I can hope for is to work FOR them, in order to make THEM more money. They aren't interested in making me a star...they are interested in how they can leverage my work to make THEM bigger stars.
But if your goal is to connect with the big name stars and work with them on producing/writing records for the big named artists, BlazeTrak seems to me to be a no brainer. It's guaranteed that your track will get to the person that you want it to get to, and you'll get the feedback that you are looking for.
Blazetrak has my stamp of approval. If you want to get your tracks to the professionals, and get feedback from them, this is the way to do it.