Bkocked Musical Creativity

As I have been working on day in and day out my mind has constantly come to a blank. I for some reason cannot come up with any new ideas for a song. This has been eating away at me for some time now. I just do not know what it is that is wrong with me. It is truly driving me crazy. I find myself sitting down in front of my keyboard ready to record something brilliant but then will be sitting there for hours just scratching my head. There have also been many days where I would begin working on a song and then not know what to do thus never finishing it or getting rid of it all together. I sometimes feel like I am stuck inside an endless loop. This has never happen to me and it is about time I break out of this cycle. I somehow someway need to regain my creativity. Maybe a change of my daily routine will do the trick. Mixing up could be just the thing I need to give me a little kick-start and draw a bit of creativity out of me. Or maybe I just need to give my mind a break and step away from composing for just a little while to see what comes to me. This would probably be best since the majority of best were random ideas that came to me spontaneously. Who knows, guess I will just see as I move forward.

As a side note, I would like to let you all know about my two latest songs I have released. They both can be found on my sound cloud at https://soundcloud.com/preston-towns. The two songs are called “Composure” and “Jazz”. Both are instrumental based just as the previous work I have done. Composure has a bouncy hip-hop feel and Jazz has a more smooth laid back jazz feeling. Give them a listen I am sure you will love them.

Getting Ready for Bigger Things

A lot of people have dreams of doing something or being something but never do anything to get to where they want to be. A lot of people have and come up with the greatest ideas but never speak about it to see if it is a good idea or not. I use to be the type of person who would just stick to himself and never share anything with anyone. When I noticed that I wasn’t getting anywhere within my musical career I knew that I need to start putting myself and my music in front of people who may like it. So in order to get my music to bigger and better places I decided to start upload my music to music sharing sites such as Soundcloud Youtube and more. I recently have been working on a ton of music and will be posting music to my SoundCloud periodically to keep updated. I also have been learning how to make cool videos with Adobe After Effect. Those videos will be posted to my Youtube channel where people who are listening can have something to look at. Another thing I have done was joined up with TuneCore so that I can have my music placed into the many different digital stores like iTunes so I can make sales on my music. TuneCore also gives me the opportunity to be placed into films and television shows with the use of sync licenses. It has been a long time coming but I hope this change of attitude will make a difference in my career. 

Industry Liabilities

My company name is The Music Tree. The Music Tree is a well organized easy to navigate online business. The website consists of allowing artist, composers and producers to sell music to industry professionals in the film industry, gamming industry and music industry whom are looking for music to use in their projects. Just like all companies my company has legal liabilities and things that may go wrong. It is important to know and understand what those liabilities are so that we can properly protect and prepare for the worse that may come. For an example, my company The Music Tree, being an online business that sells music will have legal liabilities that deal with contracting and copyright infringement. When it comes to making sales on music The Music Tree bridges a contract between the costumer and The Music Tree and also between the artist or owner of the song and The Music Tree. This is to establish between the company and costumer what is permitted and not. It is also to make note of what is required as far as payments. For an artist, composer and producer a contract will consist of things such as how much they will be paid if their song is purchase and also when will they receive their payments. Contracts will become a liability the second an artist or company feels that they have been wronged in any way. The copyright law can play a vital role when it comes to legal liabilities. Copyright infringement is a dangerous thing to play with and can put a tremendous hole in my company. Lets say for an example, there is an artist and said artist wants to a song that he has so he puts it on The Music Tree’s website. Once the song is on the website another artist whom of which is the owner of the copyright finds it within the database and decides to sue The Music Tree for infringement. My company could possibly be stuck with charges when it has done nothing wrong. The situation may become worse if the song was sold because now the company who made the purchase can now sue The Music Tree if their company has been harmed in any way. Another aspect of my business that can be a legal liability is any legal documentation that needs to be filled out. If any form or registration were complete poorly or with false information my company The Music Tree can be shut down completely with no questions asked. With that being said it is important to know what can and will hurt your company and prevent it from growing.

Negotiation Techniques

When it comes to negotiating there are many different techniques that may be used to gain the deal you are looking for. Some of these techniques are separating the people from the problem, BATNA and handling dirty tricks. In a Ted Talk presentation done by William Ury called “The Walk From No to Yes” he talks about separating the people from the problem. It was very interesting the way he explained the topic. He first told a story about a tribe in South Africa he once helped solve conflict for. He said before getting started they will have one person go and hide all of the poisonous hunting arrows in a bush. They then will sit and talk. If they find it that temperatures are rising they will send each other off to see their relatives to cool off. This was to keep the situation at ease. William described this as the third side. There will always be two sides of a story. For example, your side of the story versus your brother’s story for fighting over a cookie. The third side will be the friend in the mix. The friend is there to remind you the problem at hand. In other words separating the people from the problem. I have learned that this will be a very useful technique to keep people calm during a negotiation. Another useful technique would be the BATNA. Stephen Stuart mentions in one of his lectures that when you are being overwhelmed and failing in a negotiation the BATNA can be used to gain control, confidence and level the playing field. A BATNA is a key item to have when going into a negotiation. It is your back up plan and you should know when to use it. In some cases you would not have to use it. Your BATNA is not something that you should use right in the beginning this can ruin any deal that could have been made. While negotiating one thing you must be aware of is any dirty trick that can be used against you. In a Case Western Reserve University School of Law lecture they talk about hardball tactic. They discuss how they work and how they can fail so badly. Dirty tricks will be use to attack someone emotionally in hopes to gain control of a situation. It is an act of intimidation and you should not allow it to affect the outcome of the negotiation. To avoid dirty tricks I have learned that it is great to point out that you are aware of what they are doing and try to gain the respect that you want. Out of all the many different negotiation techniques, these are the three I feel will be most useful to keep a negotiation under control.

The Music Library

There has been many times where I have sat down and asked myself what is it that I want to do for a career. Many of these times I have said I wanted to be a recording engineer, but after a few weeks of interning at a studio I quickly realized that is not what I want to do. Being in a studio just was not for me. Then one day I began to think. I brainstormed for a long time. I had the thought of taking all of the music I write and compose and then package them into my very own music library. In order to do this I need to start creating a lot more content and find out more about music libraries. So I did my research and while researching I came across a company called The Music Collective. The Music Collective is a music production company. They offer music services including composition, music supervision, editing and mastering. They also do clearance and licensing to the entire production community. The Music Collective has a large music library with a wide range of different genres including acoustic, funk, pop and many more. Their music library consists of thousands of songs. After looking at their company I realized how I should go about starting my own music library. I am going to need a team, a team in which each individual person specializes in a different genre. They will then go about their day creating content to be stored within the music library. This way we will be able to gather content fast and grow quickly as a company. I suppose this easier said then done. It will be a challenge to find a group of motivated people who are willing to commit. So now it is time to move to the next step and find this group of motivated individuals and start our music library.