I have not written many songs, it averages out as one every two years for the last 12 years, so I’m not exactly a prolific songwriter. Although I sing and play in an acoustic duo – Tin Taxi I would not really describe myself as a singer-songwriter – not even as a budding one.
Soundcloud
But I would like to get some of my songs “out there”, so I decided to put them on line. I chose Soundcloud and loaded up three of my songs on 23rd June.
https://2045.co.uk/wp-admin/users.php
I started out on the web as a photographer and I own the domain names photo-electric.com and photo-electric.co.uk. So I have set up the latter as a simple html single page site with links to my songs and I have set up a redirect from the other site.
I got some plays early on, but I suspect they were folk trying to sell me some form of representation plus my plays checking everything worked.
Muse Songwriters
I have also joined Muse Songwriters. The standard of singing and presentation is very high, It seems more of a singer-songwriter site and most of the posts sound like the finished item. That’s not really what I’m looking for. I would really like to hear other people doing my songs. On the forum you have to leave two answers to other contributors posts for every post of your own. I found out that to embed the song from soundcloud, you use the link, not the embed code.
I posted “A Pair of Minutes” which seemed to be quite well received, but quite a bit of criticism over the last line of the chorus which is “Da da da”. Da is Russian for yes, so it’s an integral part of the story so I’m not changing it. One post criticised my voice and presentation. As it’s recorded exactly how I would sing the song live, there is not a lot I can do about that. I think that members who do not have English as a first language may not have picked up on the pigeon English. It has helped my Soundcloud stats. I’ve had 26 plays in the last three days, mostly on the first and second day after posting.
I don’t think the Muse will help me get the songs to anyone who might want to perform them. The only people who will hear them are other songwriters. I would not look for songs I would want to sing on the Muse, so I guess that will be the case for most, or even all, members.
I guess there are just so many sing-songwriters nowadays. When we go to folk clubs or acoustic sessions, the songs we hear are either well known or by well known singers. If the performer performs he own songs, that will usually be the first and last time we will hear them.