No One Will Take Your Call

So after an encouraging visit to a big record label in New York I was pumped. Told from the horse’s mouth, which in this scenario was a head A&R guy, that all you had to do was your research. This was in response to a question I had asked about finding out what artists are looking for songs. He made me think that all I had to do was call up the record labels and they would tell me what artists were that were looking for new material. How didn’t I know that it wouldn’t be quite that easy?
I decided to begin by looking through my list of contacts that I had made to figure out who could point me in the right direction of these mysterious record label workers that knew this privileged information. Ah … I had found it, let me call this guy at I met from another big label in New York. We can call him Mr. UK. So I say to myself, Mr. UK was very nice, I can all him and find out who that person might be at his label. So I call and he actually answers and I say “Hey, I just wanted to touch basis with you to see if you can point me into the right direction as to who the people are that are looking for music at your label.” He then said to me “ Hey listen, I could give you all the names I want but no one is going to take your call. They’re too busy for that so they don’t have time. So if your good at what you do, look through our roster, write songs for those people and then maybe something can happen. I’ll have my assistant send you the links.” As my face dropped, dejected on the other end, “I offered a thanks a lot and will do.”
After hanging up the phone I could have sworn I quit the music business. I felt so discouraged about the possibility of finding out who these people were. This is part of the reason that creative people, hire business people to take care of this kind of stuff. Being that I think I am extremely important, I did not want to hear that no one was going to take my call. I mean I know these people have down time at some point in their day. But I sucked it up and realized, “Hey this isn’t personal.” No one will take my call because they don’t know who I am yet, not because I am a nobody. So I sucked it up, sent Mr. UK an e-mail, thanking him and asking for the links. You gotta start somewhere and hopefully Mr. UK is leading me in the right direction. And mark my words; these people will know who I am…eventually!