To Submit or Not to Submit

Tis the season of many things, holidays, political mayhem, and for those of us aching for recognition, opportunities to have our music, that indelible product of our souls and psyches, reviewed or offered for prizes in contests at the low low price of $35 a pop. In and of itself that's not a grand fee but if you  want more than one song considered, it adds up quick. A typical album would be $300 or $400 smackaroos! Not exactly chump change even for those of us who can afford it. And there are any number of different organizations putting on these contests, noting the industry and artistic talent doing the judging; it's all very exciting.

Unlike the lottery, however, they don't state the odds.

Despite the tone, I'm not necessarily against such things, so long as one is wide-eyed about the actual possible outcomes and what you expect those outcomes to be. The fee is, as they say, for administrative purposes and whether you receive any notice of how your music was received is dependent on whether those administrative costs cover an actual response. Then there's the reason they put on the contests to begin with. We all believe ourselves to be budding superstars, but stars rarely align and there's that whole image and age thing that blows most of us out of the water. There's also the genera of what sells and what does not, irrespective of its artistic quality, which is the bane of all artists!

The result then is a calculated evaluation, or just plain old hope, that what I've submitted meets a particular need given the general condition of the market to which my hopes and prayers depend. The upside is someone will love the song and want to buy it for, as it is delicately put, a known talent that can maximize its monetary value. Whether you profit by that is a matter of the contract you sign, but let's not get ahead of ourselves just yet.

I allow myself two per year, beginning this year and no more...as an experiment, of course, in primal reduction.

In other news, this week's song is Let Her Dance, from the recently released album, Whispers (From a Forgotten Memory). 

The lyrical theme of the song came to me at a concert last year as I watched a number of women, and I've seen this many times before and it is always women, dancing by and for themselves in the isles completely oblivious to those around them, most notably the men who brought them; lost to the music and where it takes them. The song then revolves around the monotony of life's routines and relationships, and how hearing a song from a time earlier when we thought life had more promise transports us back with that rush of memory and feeling. This also explains people grooving to a tune at the grocery store.

You can hear it at mrprimitivemusic.com, or at Spotify or any other fine streaming service.