PROFESSIONAL SONGWRITING (My personal views and experience).

The voice is more than its physical components, it is also the messages it carries from and to the heart. An artist's voice is not only their throat, it's also the song.

I want to focus on four basic themes:

1. An artist must create a unique brand.

2. They must write and/or choose songs that reveal their point of view.

3. Then must always be aware that they are both artist and commodity.

4. They must know their fans.

I suggest that an artist needs to;

Know who they are, what they stand for, how they experience life and how the world views them.

Be genuine, not just trendy unless they truly resonate with the trend, mindful that the audience has a great "wanna be" detector.

Either fit a genre well or be  groundbreaking, willing to create their own genre.

Truly know their fanbase and why their fans love them.

Have a unique brand both visually and sonically.

Walk the fine line between artistic temperament and product/commodity.

Understand the modern strategies of marketing music and how to use their branding to effectively find and connect their music to new audiences

Write and/or find songs that consistently reflect all these factors. Songs are logos, calling cards, revelations of who the artist is.

I stress that a writer has to not just write about an experience, they have to replicate one

I would love to sum up this post with one sentence.
Songwriters must tell the truth, when you tell the truth, there will be an audience for it.