Peter Hanna: the songwriter behind hits for David Guetta and Lindsey Stirling

When investors build a portfolio, they rarely put everything into a single asset. They spread their capital across different holdings, so that the overall result does not depend on one individual asset performance.

A songwriter's music catalogue works in a surprisingly similar way. Over a career, every song written, co-written and released becomes part of a collection: some titles turn into global hits, others find dedicated niche audiences, and all of them together contribute to the royalties the catalogue generates over time.

Over more than a decade as a songwriter, top-liner and producer based in Los Angeles, Peter Hanna has built his catalogue in exactly this way, writing with and for artists such as Lindsey Stirling, Daddy Yankee, David Guetta, Nick Jonas, The Chainsmokers, Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike and Robin Schulz. Together, the works included in his catalogue have generated more than 2.5 billion streams on Spotify alone.

Two selections of Peter's catalogue are available on ANote Music: the Violin Selection Catalogue, which includes his work with Lindsey Stirling, and the Pop & Dance Selection Catalogue, which focuses on his dance and pop productions.

We sat down with Peter for an exclusive interview. In this article, we share some of the highlights: his first placement, how he became "the dance music guy", the stories behind "Feels Great", "Young" and "Instagram", and why he chose to list part of his catalogue on ANote Music.

You can watch the full interview on YouTube at the end of this article, and discover both Peter Hanna catalogues on ANote Music.

Peter Hanna's journey as a songwriter

Before building a catalogue of more than 2.5 billion streams, Peter's journey into music was anything but linear.

How did Peter Hanna get his first placement?

Peter's first success in music came almost by chance, shortly after he moved to Los Angeles.

"I had just moved to Los Angeles and I was working a job in an office, wanting to do music, but I was very, very poor. One of my coworkers' wife worked in music licensing for CBS, and the first song that I wrote and recorded in Los Angeles became the theme song of a TV show."

The show was The Insider, a Hollywood news programme that aired six nights a week. For Peter, that placement was the first real proof of how a song can keep earning royalties every time it is broadcast.

"It consistently played for an entire year, six nights a week, in a prime time slot, which pays out the most. I was shocked at the amount of money that it was making. I'd never made that much money in my life."

That first income allowed him to quit his office job and dedicate more of his time to music.

From rock musician to "the dance music guy"

Peter did not start out as a dance music fan. In fact, it was a writing session that did not go as planned that set the direction of his career.

"I showed up at this guy's house that I did not know, and the girl that I knew ended up getting sick. He was super into dance music and I did not like dance music at all. I grew up playing more rock music. He said, let's try to write a dance song, and I said, fine."

They wrote a simple song on the piano, with no production. About six months later, that song was on the radio as "Something Better" by DJ Audien and the country group Lady Antebellum (now Lady A). Released in 2015 and included in the Peter Hanna Pop & Dance Selection Catalogue on ANote Music, the track has gathered 57 million streams on Spotify since its release.

"I was driving around Los Angeles hearing myself on the radio, and I kind of became this dance music guy. I was one of the first pop writers to start working in dance music, because nobody really believed in dance music at that point in the pop world."

From there, Peter started writing for artists such as David Guetta, Lost Frequencies, Diplo and Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike, building the relationships that would shape a large part of his catalogue.

What does a top-liner do?

Part of Peter's work is top-lining, a role that is well known inside the industry but less so outside of it.

"Generally, a top-liner is solely focused on the lyrics and the melody. Typically, top-liners get a track from a producer, whether it's a DJ or just a producer, with maybe some chords and a drum beat. The top-liner essentially writes a song over that: the melody, the arrangement, the lyrics, the hook, all the different sections."

Behind that role is a long musical training. Peter has a degree in music composition and has been playing piano, guitar and violin since he was five or six years old. Yet he only wrote his first song at around 22.

The switch came after his university soccer career. Having played four years of NCAA soccer, Peter still had one year of school left and suddenly a lot of free time. A friend invited him to join a band that needed more songs to fill its sets.

"I was just playing keyboards in the band, but about six to nine months later I was the new lead singer of the band and I'd written all new songs. I really fell in love with songwriting. It just clicked."

When the band broke up, he drove from Virginia to Los Angeles on his own, with about twenty dollars in his pocket, a friend's couch to sleep on and no contacts in the music industry.

The stories behind the songs in Peter Hanna's catalogues

Some of the songs in the Pop & Dance Selection Catalogue took an unexpected path before reaching listeners, while the Violin Selection Catalogue tells a completely different creative story.

“Feels Great”: the hook nobody believed in

Many of the stories in the Peter Hanna Pop & Dance Selection Catalogue are about songs that took an unexpected path before reaching listeners.

"Feels Great" by Cheat Codes featuring Fetty Wap and CVBZ is one of them. Released as a single in 2017, it reached the top 10 of Billboard's Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart and has gathered 230 million streams on Spotify. The song was built around an explicit tag in the hook, at a time when swearing in pop choruses was rare outside of rap.

"I had to fight very hard with my collaborators, with the labels and the artists, who were skeptical of whether or not that would actually work. [...] It made it through a lot of rounds and a lot of people debated it. The song ended up on top 40 radio and did really, really well."

“Young”: from piano ballad to big indie track

"Young" by The Chainsmokers took a different kind of journey. The song is included in Memories...Do Not Open, the duo's 2017 debut album, which debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, and has gathered 150 million streams on Spotify. Peter and his co-writers wrote it as an intimate piano piece, almost a ballad, and sent it to the duo.

"They sent us back a production version and it was this huge indie track with monster drums. A lot of times when you get a song back from a DJ it can be nerve-wracking, because sometimes they have a vision that isn't aligned with yours. This was one of those times where you're just pleasantly surprised and in awe of their talent."

Writing melodies for a violin: the collaboration with Lindsey Stirling

The Peter Hanna Violin Selection Catalogue is built around one of Peter's most unusual collaborations: his work with violinist Lindsey Stirling. Here, the main melody is not sung, but played.

"Usually I'm finding melodies that will work for lyrics. But very luckily, I grew up playing the violin. [...] She loved the fact that I could understand what she was going through in trying to create these melodies that could stand alone with no lyrics, where the violin is the main melody."

Peter played the violin during some of their sessions, going back and forth on melodies with Lindsey, and the collaboration is still active today. Their work together includes "The Arena" and "Something Wild" featuring Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness, both from Lindsey's 2016 album Brave Enough. "Something Wild" was written specifically for the end credits of Disney's Pete's Dragon and also appears on the film's official soundtrack. 

"Instagram": a five-year journey to a global hit

In the Peter Hanna Pop & Dance Selection Catalogue, the biggest track in terms of streams is "Instagram", released as a single in 2019 by Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike, David Guetta, Daddy Yankee, Afro Bros and Natti Natasha, with 310 million streams on Spotify alone. Its story started years earlier in Los Angeles, at a time when social media following had become a topic of conversation everywhere.

"I saw this girl get annoyed at a guy bragging about his social media following, and I wanted to write a song about it."

Peter wrote the hook with his friend Frankie and sent the song to David Guetta, who loved it but could not quite nail the production. It then passed to Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike, and the song ended up on the shelf for a while.

"Five years later it ends up coming out, and I hear that Daddy Yankee has done a verse on it. Natti Natasha is on it, and Afro Bros had gotten on the track as well. It went from a really rough production that I had done very early on, through five different producers, to a huge song."

With so many artists involved, the release took off immediately.

"It came out hot. It was doing like a million streams a day. It was such a wild ride. I definitely had some low points where I wasn't sure if this song was ever going to come out."

For context, Peter explains that the average time between writing a song and its release is around one year, although "Something Better" reached the radio in about six months.

Songwriting and music royalties in the streaming era

Peter's career has followed the industry's shift to streaming, which has changed both how songs are written and how songwriters can access the value of their work.

How has streaming changed songwriting?

Peter started writing at a time when the industry was moving from albums to singles and then to streaming. For him, the shift changed not only how music is distributed, but also how it is written.

"Everything went from album-focused to single-focused, and then to streaming-focused. People started looking at songwriting differently. There was a lot of emphasis on finding hooks that could work on social media, so the idea of creating viral moments in songs became a thing."

Today, he says, that trend is even stronger.

"Attention spans are even shorter. We write a song and we tease it on TikTok, and if it does well, they put it out. If it doesn't, they move on to the next song. [...] How many people are making videos with your song? That's a huge metric that no one saw coming."

Why did Peter list his catalogues on ANote Music?

For Peter, the decision was about the next chapter of his career.

"I really got excited about the opportunity to receive my future royalties up front, and be able to make certain investments in my life and do certain things that I wouldn't be able to do otherwise."

It is also about the challenge of starting again.

"When I started, I did not even know that selling your catalogue was really a thing. I love a good challenge, and the challenge of building a new catalogue was really exciting for me. It's giving me new motivation and I'm loving it."

For rights holders, listing part of a catalogue can be a way to access the value of royalties built over years of work, while allowing investors to participate in the future royalty income generated by those songs.

His favourite song and his advice to songwriters

Asked which song from his ANote Music catalogues he would never remove from his playlist, Peter chose the one that started it all: "Something Better", included in the Peter Hanna Pop & Dance Selection Catalogue.

"It was a really special song that kicked off my career and gave me a lot of credibility. I don't think I've ever written a song, still to this day, where I got as many people messaging me to say how impactful it was to them, or that it changed their life in some way."

His advice to songwriters starting out today echoes what we have heard from many of the songwriters we have interviewed: don't do it alone.

"Write all the time, be constantly writing songs, and find co-writers. Nobody is good at everything, and everybody sees lyrics in a particular way. Challenging yourself to work with other people who have strengths that you don't have is the most important thing. It was the biggest piece of growth for me, by a mile."

It is a fitting conclusion for a catalogue that, like a diversified portfolio, was built across many collaborations, genres and artists.

Watch the full interview

This article only covers part of the conversation.

In the full interview, Peter goes deeper into his first steps in Los Angeles, his work as a top-liner, the making of "Instagram", "Young" and "Feels Great", his collaboration with Lindsey Stirling, and his perspective on songwriting in the streaming era.

Watch the full interview with Peter Hanna on YouTube:

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