Successful Indie Strategies

Awesome series of articles on Hypebot.
How indies are breaking new bands

There are definitely some key themes:
-Partnerships with bigger companies
-Commercial placement (tv/film)
-Diversifying merch
-TOURING!!!
-Collaborations with other artists (reaching new fans)
-Build a community of fans (consistent web content)

50 Entertainment's Kyle Bylin will touch on this more in depth in a future Hypebot feature.

What do you think indie labels should be doing to break their bands?

Successful Indie Strategies

If You're Looking for a Magic Key you can Stop the Search

The music industry isn't some magical place where you're either in or you're not. Over the past few months, I've finally gotten my first real taste of the industry I've dreamt of belonging to my entire life, and as exciting and educational as it's been, it didn't give me the magical key to the over-sized gates I always kind of imagined existed. Like Heaven, only for the living. Nope, sorry to burst your bubble. It's not there. Anywhere.

This industry, I've found, is just like anything else in life. It's exactly what you make of it. Opportunities don't fall at your feet. You can't sit in your room writing songs and storing them on cassette tapes, expecting your big break to come. You've got to go out and live it like you go out and live life. It's there.


I'm currently preparing for the biggest move of my life-- I'm going to Tennessee. I've got it better than a lot of other people who make this move do, because I've already got friends down there. I already "know someone who knows someone..." and that list of connections connects me to some pretty amazing people. I could probably get to Kevin Bacon in three people. Forget six. Six is for normal people. For the un-privelaged, you know. No, I'm special, because I'm connected.

But so are a lot of other people. There's no magic key. There's just trial and error. There's the realization that the magical place doesn't exist-- but maybe you can create a place just like it for yourself. A place that belongs to you, and only you. Build relationships, take every opportunity you can get, and do your very best work, all the time, no matter what. And that's what I'm planning on doing.

The fact is, I've already got so many ideas, so many leads, so many different paths I could take. This move has been 22 years in the making. It's my time. In this crumbling economy we're facing, people think I'm crazy for choosing this particular moment in my life to move out of my parents' home to take myself all the way across the country. Maybe I am. But I'd be lying if I said I hoped for things to work out. I don't have to hope. I know they will.

The music industry is suffering, just like the rest of American industry as a whole. But the ones who survive are the ones who are so excited to be a part of it, they can hardly contain themselves. They're the ones who have passion, drive, dreams that must be lived out.

I'm not saying it will be easy. I know it won't. It's not like I have a magic key to the gates of Music Heaven. No, I just know that there's me-shaped hole in the wall somewhere, and I'll find it, no matter how long it takes.

-Courtney

Can Courtney make it? Judge for yourself.

If You're Looking for a Magic Key you can Stop the Search

What is your Definition of Success?

It's a race to the finish. Are you in the 50 meter or 100 meter dash? Or are you in a 10-20 mile long triathlon with the race changing every few miles? It all depends on where you have your mind set as to what "success" is. Do you finish an album, share with a few people and have a lot of congratulations? Make $20 on iTunes or CD Baby and hope the music changed at least one person's life? Or maybe you want to live like a rock star? Everybody has their own vision of success and each has their own road to it.

If you go onto CD Baby, the average album sales for an artist/group is $340. Now that number is off a lot depending on how much work you're willing to put in. If you only wanted to make an album that the world has a chance to hear, than your job is done. You made $20 and can now eat Chipotle for a few days. If you decided to promote it yourself (depending on your talent), you can sell near the average of $340. Now if you put the album out, do some shows, promote, and build a fan base this is where the numbers push the average. You may sell over $5,000 (CD Baby had around 50 people sell over $10,000) and you become a mini rock star and you can not only eat Chipotle for all 7 days of the week, but pay rent for a few months.

Success is defined by Webster as "a favorable or desired outcome". So it all depends on what you want to do. Music is not a career for everybody, so getting recognition is not always top priority. If it is your career then recognition is of the utmost importance, because how else would you be able to survive? Even if you want to work in the background of things (i.e. studio musician), recognition is still important to be able to show that you are willing to help people out.

So putting into consideration your definition of success, how much work are you willing to put in?

From the mind of

Keveeno Reeverts

What is your Definition of Success?

The Resurrection of the "Boy Band" (insert scary/cool looking font)

I am a little late on reporting this, but I'll still discuss the resurgence of this "brand new idea" of boy bands. Websters definition with the Keveeno explanation of a boy band is; a band acumalitive of mainly boys with the subtraction of a female presence meaning that possible there is a female presence within one of the boys soul, hence the Lance rumors. Boy bands usually are used as marketing around a female pop sensation (See Britney and N'Sync/ Backstreet Boys). Today they go younger to try and resurrect record sales with artists like Hannah Montana and The Jonas Brothers. So pump up the vocal enhancers, hide the wardrobe malfunctions, this is the resurrection of The Boy Bands.

(Image: New Kids on the Block, the O.G.s of the Boy Band phenomenon)

Without looking up the statistics, I'm pretty sure with the hype the Jonas Bros are getting more profits from touring than than selling records. This all shows a striking resemblance to when I was in Middle/Highschool and N'Sync was huge. The girls at my school were more into Usher, B2K and more of the RnB pop sensations, but there were a few that caught on with this boy band craze. Well, as with these political debates right now, it gets old. There was a break where they pushed artists who just were not ready as there was a steady decline in record sales across the board. I guess there was a breaking point where they needed something… anything. They found it in The Jones Bro's.

Success in todays market is strongly pointing toward a more live performance rather than cd driven business model. When will the statistics of billboard top 200 become irrelevant and selling out shows become more of what defines success today?

From the mind of

Keveeno Reeverts

The Resurrection of the "Boy Band" (insert scary/cool looking font)

Memories

In a world where everything is based off of what has worked and what has not, it shows that no idea can ever be completely original. It is all about taking on the challenge of what has worked in the past and using it in the present to make it work for the future. No idea should ever be the same. The work should never be done. What worked yesterday will not work today, but pieces of it will.

Take the music industry and how it is working today. It is a mutated mix of what has worked in the past. No longer do the majors have the pull that they have used to monopolize the industry. The indies have come up from bands managing themselves to smaller versions of majors with less overhead and more chances at free publicity, but at the cost of having to battle countless others for consumer attention. What costs will the music industry have to incur to get back into its original form or a mutated version with the same results? Do we give up on plans to recreate the original results thanks to everybody's true love, the internet? Or do we not only change the process, but also our expectations and expand the process to include other ways to at least recreate past success?

Another question: Do we redefine "success"? In music, can "success" be the artist that is heard by millions of people, making a million bucks, or just having a huge crew that live and die by their side?

You live by the past, you die by the past. In industry, no matter which one you are in, you need to take past memories that you have experienced to allow a change. I've always said "out with the old, in with the new", but I was only partially correct. Out with the original blueprints, but in with updated versions. You need to take the past to change them into something that is new rather than just follow the old plan.

Yesterday, everybody is on myspace. Today, take it and add the friends and than converse with them.

Yesterday, people started to write blogs. Today, take your blogs and converse with the people who comment to argue your point.

Yesterday, we had a president with another generation of experience. Tomorrow, we need change

Yesterday, we had a business strategy that worked, made people billions. Today, that same plan does not work but people still pimp the old way. Tomorrow we need change.

Take your past memories and expand, but never let the memories die...

From the mind of

Keveeno Reeverts

Memories