[ed2000]

My brother in law died a few years ago. During his short life he had become quite an accomplished guitarist and composer considering he had no formal training. In the early 90's he recorded and multi-tracked all the instruments and created mostly heavy melodic rock instrumentals which he copyrighted. In the late 90's he recorded a demo tape with a full band and vocals. He had asked me, before his death, to somehow get the music out to the public. I feel there are several tunes that have commercial potential in the classic rock genre. How do I find a band that will give the tunes a listen?

 

[Lester B. Flat]

I'm sure lots of people would be interested in listening at least. Pitching songs to bands or artists is somewhat of an artform. You have to pitch the right song to the right band/artist at the right time to have any success. The odds are way against you.

If the demo is of reasonable quality you should consider an indie release under his name. If you have the original recordings it could be remixed and mastered. You could set up a website and sell through that.

I would play his stuff for people whether they are musicians or not and find out which song is the most popular. Then, aim that song at somebody. If one song becomes a hit, then there will be more interest in the rest of his book. You might also find a publisher who would be interested in making some sort of deal, to their advantage of course.

Several years ago I peddled some of my tunes to various record companies. One guy asks me:

"Do you know how many out of every thousand demos we recieve that the artist gets signed?"

"No, how many," I said.

He says, "Zero". None(actually).

 

[Hamm Guitars]

Make MP3 copies of the songs and make them available for free dowload someplace. Look around for MP3 sites of an appropriate genre.

 

[kat_]

Make a video to go along with a song and put it on youtube. It's far too easy to spend far too much time browsing through the videos on there.

 

[Guest]

My brother in law died a few years ago. During his short life he had become quite an accomplished guitarist and composer considering he had no formal training. In the early 90's he recorded and multi-tracked all the instruments and created mostly heavy melodic rock instrumentals which he copyrighted. In the late 90's he recorded a demo tape with a full band and vocals. He had asked me, before his death, to somehow get the music out to the public. I feel there are several tunes that have commercial potential in the classic rock genre. How do I find a band that will give the tunes a listen?

Before you do anything else: register the songs with SOCAN. You might have to give them a call and see how a posthumous registration works. But don't show that stuff to anyone until it's officially labelled as yours (or his, however posthumous authorship rights work). Nothing would suck more than having this stuff stolen.

Once you're signed up with SOCAN you'll have access to the Canadian music publishers directory. Publishers are a little easier to deal with than labels. They don't have quite the don't-call-us-we'll-call-you attitude (yet). Start with the big ones. See if you can get a sit down with a rep. Play the stuff for them. If they see potential they'll take on the songs (and a cut) and handle shopping it to the right bands (for a cut of course). If you want a discourse of the legal side of things check out Passman's All You Need To Know About The Music Business. There's a good portion of the book dedicated to writing and publishing.