Group items tagged

Malcolm Gladwell ,author of the book Outliers, is pretty adamant about his 10,000 hour rule. The rule states that in order to master any craft 10,000 + hours of practice must be accumulated. And getting in that many hours of practice can take 10 years or more. Basically, you gotta put in your work. The music promotion blog has a piece on Steve Martin that really attests to the decade journey that one must take to reach celebrity over night. By the time Steve was propelled into great public awareness he was a well oiled machine, ready to deliver the goods. Television (tell a lie to your vision, particularly shows like american idol and other media sources are very good at trivializing the years of work that some of our greatest icons put in to achieve icon status. Record Labels have even been fooled forgoing development for the young inexperienced (We've seen how well that works). Thats actually the equivalent of getting hired for an entry position and then getting promoted to CEO of the company a few weeks later, needless to say, that company's going to fail. I guess the point of this is if you want to increase your chances of success, not being signed but actually be icon status (being remembered for the many things you've done, not just the first thing), then you have to sleep in that car, perform in front of an audience of empty chairs, bounce from label to label because when god finally taps you on the shoulder and says its go time your going to outshine all of the others not even half way through their 10,000 hour mark. Put in the time and you will be rewarded.

Applying the Record Label Model to the Indie Artist You may already be familiar with the online world of myspace music and facebook pages, and the offiline world of shows and radio play, but as George Howard puts it "Err too far online, you fail. Too far offline, you fail". In order to be successful today you need to achieve the perfect balance between online and offline marketing. Eleetmusic's Kevin English outlines how to use the four R's (Radio, Road, Reviews and Retail) of the "Not so new record label model" to capture the audience statistically proven to be more receptive to trying to new things. College students.

Guns N' Roses hit with a copyright lawsuit. Songs stolen from indie musicians.

Okay, so your an independent artist, more power to ya. You write, produce, record and distribute your own tracks, but how well is your music being received. Major record labels have numerous methods to track the performance and popularity of their music. Soundscan, and Billboard are some of those ways. But once the music reaches the consumer thats when the metrics come to a screeching halt. Luckily now as an indie musician you have many ways to track your music, some ways actually rival those of the record labels. You can now monitor your brand, and even statistics such as how much time my audience spends listening to my material, and what songs are shared the most in their network.

I just spent 30 minutes, reading Courtney Loves rally call to all indie musicians. It's never been a better time to be independent. The controversial singer takes on record label profits, Napster and "sucka VCs." Her passion for music is definitely shared by the staff here at SongPlacements. Excellent article.

Labels put more musicians in the poor house.