How to Finally Get Organized and Write More Songs

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

As a songwriter myself who has amassed a backlog of over 2,000 songs — both finished and incomplete — I longed for a way to organize my lyric snippets, title ideas, riffs, and chord progressions, so I could find the best ones and get them recorded and released. For a long time, I searched for a simple way to record new songs, attach lyrics, and add tags and comments so I could keep track of my songs and share them with collaborators. Fortunately, there is a new app for songwriters that is designed especially for these tasks. Learn how it can help you climb out from beneath the backlog of your song catalog.

Table of Contents:
• Locate all your song audio files
• Assign song details and tags
• Import lyrics
• Create albums (collections)
• Keep track of pitches and contests
• Lost lyrics? No more!
• Be sure you have a backup
• Conclusion

Locate all your song audio files

Download and install SongwritersdB app. Then, locate all folders on your computer or phone that contain your audio files and import them into SongwritersdB. This is easy to do using either the Import Songs function or the Cloud Connection.

Don’t worry about the length or quality of the audio files. Just import them all.
Each audio file will show up in its own song “tile” on the homepage.
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You will be able to add a rating, tags, and comments once you finish with this task.
It takes one click to play the song or song idea, and another to open the related lyrics sheet. It’s all connected, including the tags and comments.
It’s a great feeling to see all your songs finally in one organized place!

Assign song details and tags

Now it’s time to add as many details about each song or song fragment as you can. Click the Play button on each song and listen for about 10–15 seconds. If you now remember the song, click Stop and enter song details on the Quick Details page.

Start with a descriptive title if there is not one already.
Assign a genre, tempo, mood, and a star rating of 1–5… be honest! Not every song or song idea is a hit.
Add details about copyright status, PRO registration, and completion status (work tape, demo, master).
Finally, add some comments that will help you later locate the song in a search (“Springsteen-style rocker” or “Cool with two acoustic guitars. Story of missing someone far away. Big melody.”)

Import lyrics

On each song tile, click the Lyrics icon and copy/paste the lyrics for the song into the lyrics page. Now you have done what you have never done before: connected the audio and lyrics to the same song in the same location!

Create albums (collections)

An album is like a folder into which you put songs that fall into a particular category. You can create as many as you want and assign a group of songs to each album. This is super-important for organizing!
For instance, you can do a quick sort to find all your songs with music but no or unfinished lyrics and then add them to an album named “Need Lyrics.” On the Albums page, you can even rearrange this group of songs in any order you like, placing, say, your favorite tunes at the top, so you’ll know to start working on them first. Then you can play the entire album of songs with one click to remind you of what the songs are.

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Keep track of pitches and contests

For any song you send to a publisher — or enter into a songwriting contest — just click the Pitches button. On the Pitches page, you can enter the date sent, to whom, referred by whom, response received (none/pass/hold/cut), follow-up needed (Y/N), type of pitch (M/F/M or F/Duo/Band), and Notes. Every week, you can do a quick sort to see who needs a follow-up email or call, or to which contests you sent which songs.

Lost lyrics? No more!

How many times have you had a great lyric idea or title that you scribbled on a piece of paper that never made it into your notebook? With the phone app that syncs to the desktop, you need only type in — or dictate via your phone’s mic — your lyric or title idea. Hit Sync, and it will be waiting for you when you next open your laptop. And with auto cloud backup, you’ll never have to worry about losing that great idea!

Also, SongwritersdB has a unique feature known as the Lyrics View. It scrapes through all your lyrics and lyric snippets and displays them in a table showing either the title and first couple of lines of all songs or no title and more lines of each song. This is a fantastic way to quickly scan through your unfinished songs and song ideas and note the ones that merit completion.

Songwriters in Nashville routinely carry a “title book” to co-writing sessions. Now you can do the same thing, but without worrying about losing it! Just put all your titles with no lyrics into a song called “Title Book.” When you need inspiration, just scan that page as well as the other songs that show up in Lyric View to spark some inspiration at your next writing session.

Be sure you have a backup

After doing all that work described above — importing songs, adding lyrics, selecting tags and attributes, adding comments, and creating albums — the last thing you want to have happen is to lose the file that contains all that information! SongwritersdB makes backing up easy, with auto backup every hour. But before that is possible, you need to connect your SongwritersdB app to the cloud, either via a Google Drive or iCloud account.

Should you mistakenly delete one or more songs, all you have to do is click Restore on the Backup/Restore page, and the lost songs will be instantly put back into the program. For this reason, keeping an up-to-date backup is super important!

Conclusion

Before you are ready to submit your songs to Disc Makers for pressing vinyl records or making your CDs, you need to have completed songs! Once your songs are finished and organized, follow our guide on how to release a song to make sure your launch reaches the right audience. But it’s easier said than done with songs on your phone, lyrics in a notebook, or loose sheets of paper, and everything unlabeled. By putting in a little effort and working with the SongwritersdB app, you will quickly find that it’s easier — and much more fun — to stay organized for your next Disc Makers album. Give it a try!