Seeking Career Advice - How to break into Jingles/Production Music?

[knewbee]

Greetings all,
I'm a singer-songwriter-producer in NYC with a Pro Tools Mix Plus system home studio, loads o' plugins, good amount of nice outboard, mics, MIDI gear, etc. Not to mention pretty good musical ability, songwriting skills and back catalog of self-produced tunes wondering...

...how would one go about breaking into the jingle, or tv production music biz? The hope would be to supplement at first, then eventually ditch my Day Gig...

...any tips, thoughts, advice, words-of-wisdom would be greatly appreciated...

Thanks!!!

[Lee Blaske]

Right off, I'd say that you'd need to move to a smaller town. It's going to be really hard to make a dent in the NYC market because broadcast time is far too precious. You'll get more breaks in a locale where the stakes aren't as high.

Lee Blaske

[donglasgow]

You might also want to try radio networks.. if you have a good demo, and some good jingles- then it may not matter what your experiance is.. as long as you can produce the product Radio networks are constantly adding new syndicated shows to their line-up, and re-vamping old ones. (ie Premiere Radio Netowrks, United Stations, Westwood One)

-Don

[knewbee]

Thanks guys!
Bump...

[Peter Steinbach]

You might want to suggest to ad firms that you would be willing to work on a PSA for free. Ad firms often give PSA's to thier new producers/creatives to cut thier teeth on. This way, it gives them a chance to see your work without any big risk to them. Producers tend to be creatures of habit when it comes to contractors. If they take a chance and blow it on a new composer, they might lose thier jobs. The idea is to form a relationship with new people at ad firms before some other composer gets the work.
Good luck, and remember...marketing yourself sucks, but you gotta do it.
-p