Bruce Houghton over at hypebot.com wrote a post a few days ago on “5 Lies Indie Musicians Tell Themselves” and it was a short and excellent post. I agree with all five at face value, with my favorite two being:
“The internet leveled the playing field for indie music.” - Big checkbooks and the marketing campaigns they buy still have the edge. The internet just opened the door for everyone. It’s what you do now that you’re in the now overcrowded room that matters.
He’s right at face value - the internet hasn’t leveled the field between independent artists and signed artists - there’s no doubt about that from the point of financial budget and marketing capacity. Signed musicians have companies with many many people who can be paid to sit at the computer and work the internet to their advantage. They have the budget to do so. Independent artists don’t.
However, I sincerely believe the internet has leveled the playing field when it comes to being able to make a music career with the tools, ideas and strategies now available that wouldn’t be available before. There are now countless options to making a good music career that puts money into your pocket and gives you the feeling of fulfillment that we humans crave.
The goal is how you use the internet and what you do in the overcrowded space as Bruce points out. It’s what I’ve been writing and speaking about for the last two years - and things are starting to change, people are starting to try new and unusual things that help them pick up more fans and more sales. But not everyone is still getting the message loud and clear - just this morning somebody showed me their music website and it was a complete brochure-style site with no mode of interaction with the fans. Poor.
Ask yourself, “how specifically can I use the internet to interact with my fans?”. What one or two networks do I want to tap into and how can I get myself to grow a big following there? Then do it.
“My sales suck, but so do everyone else’s.” - Sure the numbers have changed, but if you can’t get people to pay something for your music then you’ve got a problem…with your music.
This is the second of the five lies that Bruce points out that I like. Not everybody’s sales suck - if they did then we wouldn’t have high music sales. A good percentage of my clients end up with sales they never envisaged in their goals but others don’t. If your sales aren’t good and you’ve tried at least 5 to 10 different tactics to sell, then it’s your music.
What are your thoughts and what lies do you think musicians tell themselves?
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WRT to point one, I absolutely agree. There are only so many hours in the day to optimize MySpace, answer messages, make and post videos to YouTube, blog, etc. Meanwhile, musicians just aren’t musicians if they’re not shedding, gigging, composing and recording (or at least doing two out of four of those activities on a regular basis). We can’t do it all ourselves. And there are sharks out there eager to take our money if we let them. We must be strategic.
WRT to point two, yes, you must have sales, and you must have some bar against which to compare your sales to others similar to you. You may sell 400 copies of your CD, but if there’s someone in your genre who has sold 10,000, you must figure out what they did. I’ve found the usual answer is that they toured relentlessly.
Thanks as always for the thought-provoking read.
–Alexa
Having been Indie in the 1980’s, I find no difference in how much you have to do to promote your music. In the 80’s, we licensed John’s music and got the albums into record stores that favored the classical pop genre and got some radio play. Then we focused on our children and their activities and aspirations and eased out of the playing field. Now we are back — the work is hard. The boutique record store are mostly gone, replaced by the internet sites that sell CD’s and downloads. Classical pop has pretty much disappeared — both on the radio and the internet. But this music is beautiful and deserves a spot on the listening dial and the internet. So we march on…