By Minim Pro
Read pretty much any blog post or print article about being an independent musician today and you will discover variations on a common theme. Everybody agrees that the internet has irreversibly changed the music business and it's now possible for anybody to make a successful career in music.
The idea is to use the internet to build a possibly small, but loyal and committed fanbase which will support you in all your endeavours - not only buying whatever you've got to sell but possibly even funding you to create your music via crowd-sourcing finance for your album or tour.
It all sounds so simple. This is how you do it.
- Make some awesome music.
- Get a website where people can hear what you do.
- Give away that music, or at least let people listen for free to encourage them to become part of your tribe.
- Update your site regularly and offer quality content to get people to become subscribers.
- Communicate with your subscribers regularly and keep them interested.
- Once you have sufficient members in your 'tribe' you can produce a product such as a CD to sell.
- You are now on your way.
Let's compare this to the old way of how things used to work in the music business. This is how it was done.
- Make some awesome music.
- Produce a demo so people can hear what you do.
- Give away recordings to gig promoters and A&R men to encourage them to book you and consider signing you.
- Publicise your gigs with flyers and posters to encourage them to come and see you play and become your fans.
- Once you have a significant local fanbase, it makes it a 'no-brainer' for the record companies to sign you and they will pay for you to make an album.
- You are now on your way.
Undoubtedly the game has changed, and the crucial difference is that there are no 'gatekeepers' whom you must impress to advance: no longer are musicians totally at the mercy of capricious record companies and promoters.
The second big difference is that your potential audience is now worldwide. In the past the reason the record companies had so much sway was because they had the resources to bring artists' music to an audience they would otherwise have had no way of reaching.
In the past, a grassroots band from Glasgow was unlikely to be able to develop an audience in London on its own because it simply didn't have the money to do so. Today, a grassroots band from Glasgow is just as likely to have fans in New York as it is in London.
So far so good, so what's the big lie in the title of post? It's in the first paragraph:
It's now possible for anybody to make a successful career in music.
If you look above at the old way and the new way of being successful, both of the lists start with the same thing - make some awesome music. The reality in the music business now is the same as it's always been - that most people don't have successful careers in music because they're not good enough.
An uncomfortable truth is that the old A&R men weren't completely and utterly useless at their jobs. Sure, they may have overlooked the odd act that could have been massive, but it's fair to say that most of the people they didn't sign simply weren't good enough to warrant signing.
The internet has removed the possibility that you won't make it through bad luck or lack of opportunity. That's amazing.The caveat to that good news is that the competition in music is probably fiercer than it's ever been. You are literally competing with just about everyone in the world who performs in your chosen genre and if you're not outstanding you won't....well....stand out!
The demands made on the attention of the average music fan online are massive. Blogs, twitter, facebook, myspace, spotify, last.fm, internet radio, and a plethora of sites designed specifically to allow musicians to showcase their wares; your potential listener is drowning in a sea of music. It's getting harder and harder for musicians to get people even to listen to their music, let alone buy it. Even if you get someone to click on your 'play' button, you're probably got about 10 seconds to grab and hold their attention or with a single click, you'll be dismissed forever.
None of this is meant to imply that it's not possible to make money from your music, nor is it in any way decrying the importance and value of the internet as a way for musicians and artists to connect with potential listeners in a way that musicians of previous generations could only have dreamed of. I'm simply pointing out something that you don't hear a lot these days in all the hype about producing and marketing your own music online: it's hard, the competition is huge and listeners' attention spans are tiny.
Ultimately, if there's nothing unique or remarkable about what you're producing, even with the modern-day miracle of the internet, you're not going to get anywhere. So many writers are currently portraying the web as a kind of unlimited pot of gold, where all it takes to make money from your music is to put it online and be omniscient when it comes to social media. The implication is that if you follow 'the rules' and market your music online in the correct way, you are guaranteed to be successful.Unfortunately this is a lie, and it's the biggest lie in modern music. You also have to make music that people really want to listen to.
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