In this premier episode mrJack talks with Max McGee who has won or placed in dozens and dozens of song contests. Max reveals his methods to not only win song contests but to get songs placed in films, TV shows and commercials. Winning song contests and getting small placements for your music is not like hitting a grand slam in the music business. But it is like hitting singles, base hits that do pay you some dough and further your resume as a music professional.
Below is a snippet of this conversation in text form. Below the snippet there is a link to hear the first forty minutes of this interview. A link to the final twenty minutes is also posted below.
SNIPPET:
Hi everybody this is mrJack your host at Show Me The Money In Music and this is a historic day for us because it’s the very first episode!
There’s going to be a lot more to come and in each episode will be tackling different aspects outside of the ordinary normal perceived ways to make money in music namely performing – we know about that although we will be discussing how people get paid and gigs and so forth but I don’t want to dwell on that today. I’m really happy to welcome my old friend I guess we’ve known each other 10 or 15 maybe even close to 20 years now I don’t know but he’s very interesting cat is very interesting character because he’s not a musician he’s not it doesn’t play an instrument doesn’t sing he’s a Lyricist but he’s got a lot done for himself and has some insights and some very specific areas that I’d like to share with the listeners that tune into this podcast or website or whatever my friend is from Pennsylvania and his name is Michael Max McGee.
Max, you’ve won more songwriting contests than anybody I know. How many have you won over the years?
11. I’m hoping for the 12th. on the 30th of October [2022] I’ll find out. [He won his 12th]
…but that doesn’t include ones where you’ve been an honorable mention, those are the ones that you won outright…
yeah those are outright wins and many many more with finalists
…right , so you’ve done quite well with these songwriting contests and some of them… well let’s let’s run down the ones that you have won
well it started in 2003 with the Great American Song competition of Washington state went to the John Lennon song competition and we not only won our category but we were the John Lennon Award winner in that contest. we went from there to the Australian International open competition which we won 3 times
…you’ve won that same contest three times?
right and when they moved away from the international part of it and just kept the Australian we won the rock category in that one year or two ago…we won SongDoor within the Pop category…we won the song of the year in Country… we’ve won the Mid-Atlantic in the Country and Bluegrass [categories]…pretty much every contest we’ve entered we’ve either won or been in the finals. The UK Song Competition we won also.
…are there any notable song competitions out there that you’ve just never entered that you are thinking about entering, because you’ve named quite a list of them for our listeners, that you think are legitimate?