We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ellen Atout. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ellen below.

Alright, Ellen thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s something you believe that most people in your industry (or in general) disagree with?

Many artists will give the advice to “never create for anyone but yourself,” but I think this is bad advice. Creating music for others can be extremely rewarding.

I’m not suggesting to start creating for the vague concept of “others.” I think that creating with the intent of reaching masses is even worse advice. I feel it’s a bit arrogant to assume that my own thoughts are so grand, or revolutionary, or amazing that the whole world should or could appreciate them. I find that artists who do this are often seeking validation for their own perspectives—and I’ve certainly been guilty too.

However, I feel that writing “just for yourself” is also equally selfish. Both place your own self at the very forefront of your creative process, and you miss the chance to connect with other people on a very deep and meaningful level.

I’ve found that when most people say that they want to make it in the music industry, they mean this on two levels:
1. They want to reach (at the very least) financial stability through their music
2. They want to express their innermost feelings through music, and have many others resonate and say “I feel that too.”

Personally, this is what I always meant when I said I want to “make it in the music industry.” We artists want our art—and thereby ourselves—to be validated. We want others to find joy and happiness in our art, but often we want that joy to come from how they resonated with our own thoughts, in an inherently prideful way. There is nothing wrong with this pursuit, but I’ve found it to be a very incomplete way of seeking fulfillment through art.

Some artists, when they hear about my company and what we do, have said “I could never do that, making songs for other people just for money. It’s not authentic art.” But they miss the whole point of our business.

It is possible for others to benefit from your art, without you feeling personally validated. And it’s possible for others to validate your art, without putting yourself as the central topic. A song can be authentic without it being about you.

I believe we can and should share our gifts, and use our talents, to find meaning and fulfillment in making others happy, not just ourselves.

I’ve spent the last four years creating (and supervising artists as they create) songs for other people. Specific, real people. Unique people with amazing stories. Some people with lives very different from my own, or who have made choices that I would not have. Creating music in this context has forced me to stay humble. It requires me to step back from my own perspective, get out of my own thoughts, and give my pride a rest.

The outcome is has been amazing. Thousands of people have had their lives changed and relationships strengthened. They cry, they laugh, they hug their loved ones. They feel true joy upon hearing their scattered thoughts and genuine emotions come to life through song—a song created just for them and their loved ones.

Most of these songs have been commissioned as a gift from one family member to another, from husband to wife (or vice versa), or from girlfriend/boyfriend. The recipients feel joy from the song—not because of my own thoughts and ideas, but because the song allows them to connect with their loved ones in a new way. I’ve seen grown men that haven’t shed a tear in 20 years cry upon hearing the song that their wife commissioned for them, because they hear their wife in the song, and they hear how their wife cares for them, all through their own unique, special details. It is authentic. It is art. It is humble. It is joyful.

I still write songs for myself sometimes, when I have something inside that’s just begging to be written, or hard thoughts that I need to work through. But these days, those “just for me” songs truly are just for me—I don’t share them. I don’t feel the need to.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My background & how I got into this: I grew up wanting to be a musician. My path swayed a lot, but music was always at the center of my life. I started publicly singing at age 6, learned guitar at 12, fell in love with punk music in high school, and thought it was my destiny to change the world through my voice and my battle ax. However, I lived a very unfocused life, meandering this way and that until I met my husband, best friend, and business partner Omayya–a fellow musician and music producer who wanted to put our ideas to concrete plans. We wrote and produced a few songs together, and performed a few shows but nothing seemed to quite hit that reverberating ether that we were aiming for. Both unsatisfied in our jobs, the two of us brainstormed ways to live off of our music. In 2020, we launched Songlorious. It was a simple shopify store selling custom songs, to help stranded families and lovers connect long-distance during the pandemic. Little did we know that it would become much bigger.

What creative works we provide/problems we solve for clients:
Songlorious creates custom songs for any occasion. With over 300 professional musicians to chose from, any person can find just the right artist to capture their cherished memories and turn them into a song to be shared for a lifetimes. It’s the perfect gift. Many couples think they have “their song,” but the ones we create are truly for them, retelling the unique way they met, their shared values, the specific things about their partner that made them fall in love, and the yet-unrealized dreams they have planned together. We offer 10 genres ranging from Country to Hip Hop to EDM, and two song lengths, containing either two or three verses. Songs are delivered in 6 days or can be expedited. We deliver a high quality mp3 file of their original song as well as a short message from their artist, explaining a bit of the songwriting process for that specific song. Songlorious handles all advertising, customer service, and quality control, so artists can just focus on creating the songs.

What sets us apart from others/what we are proud of:
1. We are the largest custom song company that is ran and owned by musicians. We understand the ins and outs of custom song-making from the top down. My co-founder and I created the first 500 orders ourselves, so we know how to make meaningful, professional songs efficiently, and have shared that guidance to our artists. We implemented the valuable personal feedback we got from our early customers, and integrated it into our systems right away.
2. We are the only custom song company that allows customers to easily filter artists by voice descriptions (i.e. gravelly or bold or soft) so that customers can easily find the perfect artist without listening to hundreds of samples.
3. We are the largest custom song company that allows customers to choose a specific artist for their song, instead of only making a wishlist that may or may not be honored. Our artists manage their own schedules on our site, so customers can only choose an artist when he/she is ready and willing to create songs.
4. We do not have the largest roster of musicians, but ours are held to the highest standards. We have no tolerance for lazy work or late songs.
5. We believe in our artists’ work so much, that we are the largest custom song company that allows customers to hear a sample of their song before paying in full.

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

When iOS changed their privacy standards a few years back, the return on ad spend (ROAS) for our digital marketing took a massive plummet, as it did for many others in the digital space. It became much, much more expensive to reach the right audiences who were looking for the kind of thing we were offering. There were several weeks where the bank account only held a few dollars more than what was about to come out on payday. At the same time, my husband and I were expecting our first child. We needed this company to survive.

We quickly realized we needed to diversify our marketing, and make cuts in other areas.

What we ended up doing, was becoming far more self-reliant:
1. Omayya cut our website developer, and learned to code himself. This has had the added benefit of allowing us to make drastic changes to our business on the fly.
2. We cut ties with the expensive marketing firm we were using, and I created all the ad creative instead. Additionally, we switched from a flat fee ad-buying service to a percentage based one.
3. We made better use of free email marketing and PR opportunities, as opposed to relying primarily on paid ads.
4. While our artist team still creates over 95% of the orders, my husband and I have returned to custom-song making as well, to further save the company money. We are now on a huge upswing.

Have you ever had to pivot?

One of the most exciting and wild opportunities I’ve had with this business was being featured on ABC’s Shark Tank. In our live discussion and on the show, we walked away with a four-shark deal. We were thrilled, not so much for their financial help, but for their personal guidance.

However, in the months after filming, it was clear that all the final negotiations would be very slow-going, and all major financial decisions were necessarily put on hold for the duration. Meanwhile, we had competitors who seemed eager to wipe us out.

My co-founder and I determined that our greatest advantage was our ability to be light on our feet, making quick decisions on the fly. So, we bowed out of the investment deal and moved on. This has proven to have been the right decision for us time and time again. We have since made many revolutionary changes in our processes at a moments notice–quick changes that we could never make with a large board of investors.

Contact Info:

• Website: songlorious.com
• Instagram: songlorious_official