If you are passionate about music and sometimes have catchy melodies or lyrics popping into your head, you should consider becoming a songwriter.
Songwriting is more than simply writing song lyrics. You can earn a living by crafting melodies, making creative beats, or sharing your music ideas with the world as a songwriter.
Getting started might seem confusing, but don’t worry. In this guide, you’ll learn the tried-and-true steps to starting a songwriting career and how you can make money as a songwriter.
Let’s jump right in.
Who Is A Songwriter?
A songwriter is a professional musician who writes lyrics, creates musical compositions, or does both.
It’s a great profession if you love music. You can make money and build a successful career writing lyrics, hooks, melodies, or entire music compositions.
Although it could be helpful and possibly give a solid foundation, you don't necessarily need a fancy 4-year degree from a music school or prior musical experience to start a songwriting career. There are many successful songwriters without a degree or any formal training.
To be successful as a songwriter, you mainly need to have an innate talent for writing song lyrics, creating melodies that resonate and spotting good music.
What Exactly Does a Songwriter Do?
Being a songwriter is all about conceiving an idea for a song and creatively capturing it into a musical composition for other commercial artists to record.
This process is not a walk in the park and takes a lot of hard work. To write a great song, you must be willing to constantly push yourself, try new things, and experiment with different genres and styles.
As a songwriter, your job is to create a song's melody, harmony, lyrics and sometimes beat.
The result of this process is a music composition, usually recorded demos sent to artists, music producers, or music executives.
If they love the demo, a commercial artist will pick up and record the song. After the song is released, you’ll get songwriting credit as the music composer(s).
Types of Songwriters
There are various parts of songwriting.
Most songwriters focus on one specific song element (melody, harmony, beat, or lyrics) while collaborating with others for the rest.
Here are the different types of songwriters:
- Lyricists: They write the lyrics of a song. Lyricists may collaborate with other songwriters (composers) whose strengths are in melody creation or composition.
- Composers: They’re mostly responsible for creating melodies, rhythms, and chord progressions. They handle a large part of the overall composition and their role involves backing tracks, crafting hooks and leads. Composers are sometimes paired up with a Lyricist to bring a music idea to life.
- Beatmakers: Music producers who make instrumentals are also classified as songwriters. They compose beats by arranging sounds from drums, percussion, guitar and other melodic elements to create composition that can be expanded on later.
- Top-liners: They contribute by singing a simple hook, chorus or verse over a pre-made existing beat as a demo. The demo song is then sent to an artist for proper recording.
How To Become A Songwriter?
If you have a love of music and a desire for self-expression, you too can become a songwriter.
Whether you enjoy writing lyrics or composing contagious melodies, here are a few steps you can follow to get your songwriting journey started.
Understand Song Structure
First things first. You must get familiar with the structure of a song.
A song structure typically has several sections including choruses, hooks, verses and bridges. These elements come together to form a song.
You need to understand the specific purpose of each section and find a way to put them together to craft a song.
Learn Music Theory
As a songwriter, it’s important to learn music theory. This is simply the study of how music works.
Make sure you understand the basic concepts of chord progression, rhythm, melody and harmony to guide your decisions as a songwriter. Try analyzing your favorite songs to understand the choice of melodies or chords used and why they work for the song.
Having basic knowledge of music theory is enough to write a song.
Practice Writing Songs
To become a professional songwriter, you need to be really good at writing songs. This may seem obvious, but many beginner songwriters don’t take the time to practice writing.
Use a notepad to scribble down ideas that come to your head constantly. Try writing different lyrics for a variety of music genres, styles, and artists' personas. Access your work with critical works and rewrite any part that doesn’t cut it.
In addition, you should have a smartphone or audio recorder to record song ideas. Melody inspiration can strike anytime, even in the shower, so you want to be able to record on the fly before you forget them.
Your ability to write relatable music lyrics that resonate and cut deep into the heart of your listener will make you stand out as a songwriter. So, dedicate enough time to writing, practicing, and improving your songwriting skills!
Record Demo Songs
Learning to record demo songs can set you apart and make all the difference in your songwriting career.
Sending over only the written lyrics isn’t enough to get signed. The best way to showcase your songwriting skills is to have recorded sample tracks to accompany them.
Knowing how to record your lyrics and song ideas is helpful. So ensure you have a handy audio recorder and learn to use receding software to capture ideas. You only need to understand the basics, so there is no need to be a recording expert.
Promote Your Work
To get ahead in your songwriting career, you need to put yourself out there.
Share and promote your best work online! Whether on Instagram or TikTok, create an active social media presence where you share snippets of your works and get known as a songwriter. You can build an engaging community of music lovers by interacting with your followers, doing frequent lives, asking music-related questions, and churning out interesting content regularly.
You can also pitch your portfolio of demo songs to commercial artists, recording studios, record labels, and music executives who could help get your work seen.
Before distributing your demos, ensure your work is adequately copyrighted, and you have proof that you’re the songwriter. This would prevent any risk of getting ripped off your ideas.
Collaborate
Collaborating with other professional songwriters is a great way to get established as an upcoming songwriter.
If you’re a core lyricist, you can team up with a commercial artist or a songwriter specializing in melody creation to make demo songs.
And if you do well as a top-line songwriter, collaborating with a beatmaker to maximize your skill is also a good move. Otherwise, you can use an AI music generator like SOUNDRAW to create an instrumental for your song.
You should also look for collaboration opportunities to work with a signed songwriter. When starting out, co-writing music with signed songwriters will help you build a solid track record and credibility. It’ll also help you have your name known in the industry.
How To Make Money As A Songwriter
Now that we’ve seen how you can be a songwriter, you must be thinking: how do I monetize my songwriting skills?
Here are the major income streams to make money off your work as songwriter:
Royalties
You can earn different types of music royalties as a songwriter.
Streaming royalties are earned based on the song's number of streams on audio streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. This is usually split between the artist, songwriter, publisher, and streaming service.
Mechanical royalties come from CD sales, vinyl records, or sheet music. You also earn performance royalties when your song is played or performed live on stage, in a coffee shop, or on radio/TV.
Sync Licensing
You can earn a license fee when your song is synced and placed in TV shows, films, or advertising projects.
To get these sync licensing opportunities, you must get your songs into a music library or pitch to production companies like Netflix and Amazon.
Publishing Deals
Submitting your songs to recording studios or publishing houses can get you signed and allow you to earn money from a record deal.
For instance, a publisher could pay you as an exclusive songwriter $5,000 monthly for a portion of your catalog or write several songs.
Becoming a Songwriter
With the amount of resources available online today, becoming a songwriter’s easier than ever.
For starters, you need to understand the different types of songwriters you can be and start thinking of specializing. You should also know song structure, core concepts of music, and the basics of music theory.
Practice writing lyrics and record demo songs to promote yourself out there. Don’t forget to collaborate with other songwriters, too.
By taking these steps, you can kickstart your songwriting career, record your first hit song, and start profiting from your music today!