It has gotten very hard to get your music into the hands of legitimate industry people. You first must determine if you plan to market yourself as an artist or as a writer
If you are an artist, you need to market yourself to A & R people or to artist management firms, etc. If you are a writer, you ned to market your product to publishers (difficult) or representatives of artists (almost impossible).
Since this is the songwriter thread, I suspect that is what you consider yourself. It is very, very hard to succeed as a stand alone writer (meaning you are not an artist who happens to write your own material). At least an artist can be booked on tours, etc (which generates more immediate revenue)
So you need to focus on publishers. Most publishers do not accept unsolicited material - and the publishers that do solicit material (the Hilltops of the world) may be scams. However, it is possible (but hard) to contact publishers by phone or mail (or if you are really serious, in person) to introduce yourself and try to set up some dialog. Possibly after a period or persistant (but polite) contacts a publisher may offer you a chance to send some material.
However, that's only the first (and perhaps easiest) step. If you do get published you can only hope that someone will actually record your song. Then hope that the recording actually sells enough copies to generate some income. Then hope your good enough to come up with more songs, etc.
There's a few of us on this site that can attest to whopping $10, $20, $30 checks rolling in once a quarter or once a year.
I'm pretty sure I could make more busking on a downtown corner!!
