Have you not noticed the internet?

People even establish relationships that only materialise in a real life meeting at their wedding!

There are a myriad of ways fans genuinely connect with artists via the internet.


And it's not a new thing either - how do bands like U2 have world-wide uberfans? Only via connecting with the people at their live gigs? No, the connection is established *before* the gig arrives in their country.. that's how the gigs sell out.


I get what you're saying... if it were the 1990s. Live gigs might be the only way people get to hear your music. Now we have the internet and you can create any image for yourself you want that engages with your chosen audience - it doesn't even have to materialise in real life any more, you can present that image without ever having to act it out on stage..


A friend's brother one day decided they wanted a load of free coffee as a coffee lover and photography enthusiast... so they started work on a coffee-loving Instagram page. Within months their profile was getting thousands of followers and then the offers of "feature this coffee and we'll supply you with x-months worth" started rolling in. Exactly what he set out to do... and then got bored and stopped posting. It was just a fun project, not even their life goal.

That strategy is the new Orange, worth noting! It is all in the advertising these days, don't even have to hype it, brand recognition to keep it rolling. Pretty much a craft beer marketing discipline in a New World of advertised competition, your product quality sells itself and develops fan base generation.

Hey. Only just signed up to Gearslutz/Gearspace.

I put the music I finish on Bandcamp. I’ve been on there since Oct 2020 (so around 5/6 months) and in that time have made around £20 after Bandcamp have taken their cut. Ok, this is a very small amount but this would probably take years to even get to that £20 on Spotify. Also, I make alternative, psychedelic rock, trip hop kind of music and don’t really do social media very well so I’ve basically put it on there and left it for people to find. I think really the music could be anywhere though - Bandcamp, Spotify, iTunes, etc (I prefer Bandcamp’s overall model and the fact that I only pay when I sell) - it’s getting the right people to listen to your music that’s the hardest part and none of these sites are set up to easily find new music from a listeners point of view. I can see from my stats on Bandcamp that 124 unique listeners have listened to one LP and 6 have bought it. Again, small numbers but not a bad percentage in that time frame I suppose, but like a lot of you all on here, If we could only times those listener numbers by a few million, we may be able to do it full time...

Yes, and once again.. U2, Rolling Stones, Radiohead e.t.c. are all artists that built a career long before streaming, Spotify and the Internet. Find me a current new modern no name artist that has built a career post streaming whom you give money to directly via crowdfunding or paypal for their music?

Feel free to list the artists that you give your money to directly that goes into their pocket? ;-)

The last one I did was Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and that was because I saw her CD listed in clearance section of Amazon so I figured I will buy it for < $10 and maybe some of it will go to her directly somehow. Who knows.

If you want to learn more about NFTs here's a doc I put together full of resources to learn more:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

And here's a free, 3 day NFT music conference starting tomorrow: https://www.the808wave.com/

I dunno. I think this is similar to the reasoning behind a recent meme, which says "even if 99.9% of people find you unattractive, there's still around 75mil. who don't". Yeah, if that's the case, good luck finding them. Like finding "1000 true fans". Pretty sure there's a fallacy hidden there somewhere, too.

Anyway, so far, what I've tried is:

1) Putting my music in several platforms (soundcloud, Youtube, Spotify etc)
2) Put it in social media & (often dedicated) forums
3) Pay for (targeted) ads (facebook)
4) Send it to promoters, djs, labels

I might be forgetting something, but these were the main things. I can't say anything really worked.

The traffic from social media, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Youtube etc is negligible (in the low thousands), promoters and djs weren't interested, as it's not in the current trends, ads brought little traffic... The only gig I booked (halfway around the world, having to pay my own expenses rather than getting payed) was cancelled due to the pandemic.

I even payed for 2000 views once, just to see if it makes any difference (i.e. if people were more likely to click on a video that had some more views than my normal views - they weren't) , and payed for Submithub once, only to get negative responses from people since they weren't covering the specific genre I did.

I'll have a listen to some of the links you've posted when I get a chance, but I don't really know how they claim to do it - or even if it really is applicable to all cases. Also, from what I see, a lot of people seem to sell "secrets to success" rather than music, which is apparently a career of its own.

Plus, note that I'm 39, so not really in the mood to go out all the time, meet organisers etc face to face to make friends with and push my music to them, so that they book me a gig - last party I went to was 11 years ago. I have neither the money nor the patience to deal with all that - I think that's a young man's game, or someone who's loaded. Neither do I care about making a channel e.g. doing music tech videos, and promoting my music on the side (a la Huang or these other Youtubers).

My goal was simply to make my music heard, not even to make a career out of it, and even so, it's proving very difficult nowadays.

I'm always open to ideas, of course, hence why I check this thread every now and then.

That's more or less true, I think. Although, top-tier musicians aside, the rest that make money, probably make less now - which is kinda the whole point.

However, that's not to say that from now on it will forever on hold zero value.

You could get a TB303, ARP2600, CS80 for peanuts or even free at a time. What about now? How about a Van Gogh while he was still alive?

When piracy was rampant, Apple came up with a model than made people want to use it - iTunes - and pay for music again. The same could (hopefully) happen again somehow in the near future. Musicians shouldn't have to give up and take it, just because this happens to be the current landscape.

To get paid, you get a job.

To distribute your music, you give it away.

If think it's good to stay focused on why you make music and keep releasing it for that reason. You make and release it as a creative outlet for personal reasons. It's not to make money as there are lot's of other easier ways to make money.


True. it could accrue value in the long tail one day. But that is also playing lottery. Basically, just the inverse of the current problem. Instead of hoping to rise out of the crowd and get heard in a mass of current releases, you are hoping that an old release will one day rise out of obscurity and get heard out of a mass of old releases sometime in the future. Except, you have the added unpredictability of the future to contend with.

It's true that music trends and history repeats itself, but it also skips over a lot of things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytaDh6yxHrw

^^ Say hello to my little friends Ferrari and their dog Mozza. :-)

I think the real answer is this:
You go play live gigs. That's how to get paid.
If you play the gigs, then you sell your music.

12 months and more of no live gigs.
How is that any way to sustain an entire music community?
Live music is a separate product.
I say we stop paying actors to do tv and film, they should only get paid for theatre.

Sure.
But if you are a music FAN you don't want great musicians to choose careers that are easier to make money from. That way you end up with fewer quality creative participation and lower quality music.
Cheap/free access to music hurts consumers more than it does the artists.

Compare the quality of organic wholefood markets with McDonalds and White Castle.

And there goes the cost I mentioned.

If Stevie , Ron Isley, Prince, Marvin, Michael, Al, Otis, Sam and Maurice White were all forced into day jobs instead of music, it would cost me and others.

Music doesn't have 0 value. It's currently undervalued.

It's absolutely silly to suggest that music has zero value because there's more music being released than ever. Imagine if there were physical units of all of what's released now in one huge store. You'd buy what had value to you. The rest would sit. But if you could take what had value to you and get it for free, you'd buy nothing.

You wouldn't take it because it had no value. If it had no value, you wouldn't be there taking it.

Now we're saying you can have all of it for free, because it doesn't have value.

It's ok. The cost will be paid. Ignorance has a cost.

@ IM WHO YOU THINK I sometimes wonder how many artists said **** it regarding the biz when it came to the psychological/physical/spiritual cost of trading one's dignity for elusive "success" in the biz?

It is the whole point you're right.... but the point is only half the story. The other half is that whilst one way of doing things has kind of shut down, a whole new area opens up (that some say is a much bigger and better deal for independent artists).

The current landscape is the current landscape.... there is no should or shouldn't about what they have to deal with. It's just reality.


The irony is, when only a very select few were getting their creative output into the public domain (outside of their local gigs) and then being shafted for 9 per cent and their rights to that music taken away for life in exchange for a small advance, probably never to recoup or earn a royalty ever.... no-one wanted to change the landscape at all, musicans were happy to suffer. Because of hope.

Now that opportunities to reach an audience are virtually free but that scant, 1 in a million chance of getting that advance and label interest has turned to 1 in 10 million.... suddenly *everyone* wants to change the system back to the days of suffering silently.

Silent suffering holds a mystique that remains desirable. People actually being able to see the difficulty in earning a living from music causes much more consternation...

String people along and they'll keep the faith. Tell them the truth so their destiny is in their hands and they'll scream and shout blue murder.

Who says it has to cost you your dignity?

@ IM WHO YOU THINK perhaps I've read too many horror stories of all the corrupt **** in the industry, I wish I could be an optimist about the business. I pray that I can change that part of me.

The first step is to learn to feel optomistic. You won't get anywhere without it now (no-ones going to come to offer that deal from nowhere).

That sounds daft but it's doable - I practice it sometimes, first experienced it at the gym when wanting to stop on the treadmill I decided to just fool myself into enjoying the sensations, stop judging them and just be with the feeling - the aching was the feeling of doing my body good etc, changing body stance, head up, looking into the sky (there was a window) and opening my eyes more so I feel more awake. I could only sustain it for a few mins before reverting back to habitual thinking... but then notice that and try again. It's a wierd feeling - like acting but with a real emotion/sensation happening. I apply it to the mild depression and anxiety I've had for probably 30 years - it can get you out of a hole for just enough time. If you can feel the emotion when singing a sad song (as I often do), then you have the ability to feel the positivity of a happy song or thought for a while too.

Im sure Prince would have said he was coerced into a form of slavery. Michael too in a sense, by his own family... but it's all he knew.

It's a bit like having a shop down a back alley in an area where no-one goes shopping.... how is anyone going to know you're there?

The internet does the same for you and your music as it does for a niche shop stuck down an alley in the middle of s small town. You can create a presence onine and drive people, traffic to that store. Then your shop is your outlet, work place and you don't need real footfall.

As with any shop, you have to find your customers see where they go, find other similar shops and advertise to their customers. The more platforms your shop is on: Ebay, Etsy, Amazon, Made etc etc the increasing number of audiences your shop is exposed to, and each platform has it's own way of advertising your store to reach markets.

Find similar music that is more successful - see where their fans discover them, where discussions take place, drive traffic from people searching for them to you all also etc etc. Upsell your work so people will say buy two albums for significantly less than if they buy them seperately etc..

The problem with relying on websites like Bandcamp is that there is no search optimisation you can do. And even if someone goes to Bandcamp to search for you... the likelyhood is many will get distracted by all the other glittery things to look at in the same store. A personal website gives you control over driving some of the traffic and how people find you.


I notice that if you search for say "Experimental music Bandcamp" the top result gives you Bandcamp's highlighted new releases and then under that featured vinyl.... So having vinyl for sale can bering you to prominence - it certainly draws me in to their sleeve designs and then on to hear what the music sounds like.

All sorts of things like that make a difference.

@ nat8808 a "deal" is not personally in my crosshairs (ageism and the reality of it is why I never dream(ed) of one).

I never looked at it as any different from any other business. You create a product, you market it, you sell it for profit.

There's corruption wherever there's money.

But can you *expect* to sell the product for profit? That would be different from any other business. In any other business you can't expect it and shouldn't expect it.

That's what I've been saying all along - it's like a business. And the world of a business changes over time. You adapt your business to suit the new environment.

To be an employee and expect payment for your work is the realm of people like Chrisso in his past - session musicians etc, not independent artists with a "product".

Nice little post. Faith is KNOWING something will happen. Wishing and hoping are totally,totally different things. This 'knowing' is not in HOW you will get there; but it is in the actual process/action of moving tenaciously to a given doable goal that is under constant re-evaluation and re-setting of ones new situation and perspective. (No matter what the odds may be) The journey is ALL. The journey is the destination. (I sound like an idiot!)

The former is why I hate how the music business has always sold people re: naive teens and twentysomethings the "dream" of "making it" with little to no idea of the work involved (although I ain't a fervent believer in the "hard work" spiel people parrot as many people work hard in various fields only to see literally nothing to show for it) and the latter is why I advocate for people telling the truth of how the business works in today's era, and not in the personal "I'm a former (insert genre type of artist) who didn't "make it" the way I hoped for so the business is an enemy to me (even though there are no friends in business, period)."

Not to mention those teens and twenty-somethings are cheaper to buy out than a long-established artist with experience.

I’m not “establishing superiority”, I’m pointing out I might have a little relevant experience. I couldn’t care less if you’re impressed - but maybe people reading it will understand the levels of personal knowledge.

Rather than guesswork and bitterness.

I don’t disagree with a lot of your points as it happens, but I stand by my original point - you don’t “buy” placements.

There’s plenty of examples of artists becoming successful without major label backing (I have a friend doing it right now)...but sooner or later you do need the clout to get to the top levels.