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Indie Artist X

yodaniel:

This is an interesting project, to an extent. 6 music industry consultants are providing their services to an un-named, unsigned artist, to help them break through ‘DIY’ methods.

The link above is to the business/ marketing plan, presented as a Google Docs spreadsheet. Each helper has an area of expertise, and between them they cover ‘Awareness’, ‘Commerce’, ‘Fan Development’, ‘Influencers’, ‘Live Shows’ and ‘Website’.

Now, it’s easy enough to poke fun at the plan, which includes game-changing tactics like “Provide regular (weekly if possible) updates to the news section of the website” and “Target the local music press for each tour stop”.

But the thing that makes me laugh most is that, with all these specialist advisors on board, isn’t that a bit like… having a record label? A label who would not only be able to make the exact same suggestions in their dewy-eyed sleep, but also fund that building-of-website and targetting-of-press with a wonderful ‘marketing budget’. Obviously this is done in exchange for a share of royalties, but DIY does seem to mean ‘run your body into the ground due to a total lack of capital’, which takes a lot of the fun out of being in a band, surely.

Actually, you may have missed a couple crucial points.  All of us “consultants” are just trying to help this guy filter through all the crappy advice out there and figure out what really works.  But here’s the catch:

1. Every bit of work has to be done by the artist himself.

2. The artist is only allowed to spend $120/month divided evenly across all channels.

Doing all the work yourself and paying for all your marketing and promotions yourself? Doesn’t sound like a label to me.  Or at least it sounds like a pretty crappy label.

We’re not trying to change the game, we’re just trying to level the playing field.  Weekly updates to a website and targeting local press is routine for a label, but trying to do it all yourself is difficult.  What gets prioritized?  What will produce the best results for your efforts?  Those are the questions most independent artists get paralyzed trying to answer.

There are too many bullshit “Top 10 Ways to Break Your Band” lists out there written by people that never put their money with their mouth is.  This project is putting all that to the test.  There’s also a lot of stories about some decently well known artist leaving their label and finding success running things themselves.  That’s fantastic, but what about those of us that never had a major label marketing us in the first place?

The best part about all this is that we’re publicly tracking the success and failure rate of all the things the artist tries to do.  This isn’t some speculative, best case scenario bullshit used to sell a book.  Myself and the other people involved have nothing to gain from this other than learning what actually works.

11am