Never mind that Sun Records hasn’t signed a new artist in 30+ years so these people obviously haven’t done their homework… What are these people thinking? Isn’t that the equivalent of emailing a law firm and saying that you argue with your wife constantly and you always win so can you please have a job as a lawyer?

Come on people… don’t be stupid. If you want to be an artist then you basically want to have a JOB as an artist. If you just want to sing songs then great… go sing in the shower or with the alley cats. If you’re really going to try to make a living as an artist, and especially if you’re trying to get other people to consider helping you, you’d better do some work first. You will never get considered for a record deal via email. Now if your email says that you’ve sold 10,000 units on your own and you’re currently on tour in our town with 2 sold-out shows and you’ve put us on the guest list to come see you, then that’s a different story.

If you want to attract a record label and be taken seriously, do these things:

1. Perform: if you only sing in your shower, then that’s exactly where your career will start and end.
2. Record your own material (not cover songs): Labels need to be able to hear what you’ve got.
3. Be unique: Sound-alikes don’t last… think of every big star and find their unique quality, what’s yours?
4. Have a professional web presence: www.yourbandname.com, Facebook, Twitter, & MySpace pages. This is what a label will look at first.
5. Sell your music and track your sales: Labels want people who will be successful. The easiest way to prove that is to already be successful on a small scale.
6. Build a buzz (market yourself): Labels have A&R people who seek out bands that are creating a buzz… combine the top 5 to do so.

Once you’ve done the above… THEN send me an email inviting me to see you perform at a local show in MY town. I’m not flying to Maine to see a wannabe country star. If you’re not touring, then your not trying, and we don’t want people who don’t make the effort.

James

Bandcamp.

Go ahead and say it with me…… Bandcamp.

Wow. This might just be the best thing to happen to independent music since….. well….. forever.

Seriously, this is staggering.

Here’s what their site says:

Bandcamp isn’t Yet Another Place to Put Your Music. Rather, we power a site that’s yours. So instead of ads for Sexy Singles Chat, your fans see your design, your music, your URL. You retain all ownership rights, and we just hang out in the background handling the tech stuff.
Choice. We offer your tracks in mp3, AAC, FLAC, Ogg…all the formats your überfans demand. Choose between giving away your music, setting a price, letting folks name their price – it’s up to you.

Viral distribution. We give your fans drop-dead easy tools to share your music with their friends, and most importantly we do it in a way that drives traffic back to you. We also give you complete transparency into how your music is spreading, with…
The motherflippin’ stats party. We show you where your fans are coming from, what they’re listening to, even which tracks they’re obsessed with versus which ones they’re skipping over. And we make it real purdy, too.

Your fifth (very nerdy) Beatle. We provide fast, dependable streaming and downloads of your entire catalog, adorn your tracks with all the metadata they need to sail into iTunes with artwork, titles, and so on intact, and mutter the various incantations necessary to get your site top-ranked in Google. All things we know you could do, but we suspect you’d rather focus on your music. Well, think of us as your invisible bandmate who loves that other stuff. And we won’t even ask to play tambourine.

And they’re not kidding… they provide a completely transparent platform to distribute your music online. Talk about power to the people! You create a profile, upload your art for the site, upload your music in WAV, AIFF, or FLAC and they automatically convert it to all major file types (mp3 (320k, VBR), Ogg Vorbis, Apple Lossless, FLAC and AAC (aka .m4a or iTunes store format), and they even add in all metadata information. You can add lyrics, decide how much to sell tracks and albums for, or give it away for free or in exchange for an email address to build up your mailing list.

Incredible.

Did I mention that it’s FREE?

You: “Seriously? Free?”

Me: “I know! Awesome, right?!”

You can check out their monetization strategy in their FAQ, which happens to be a well written and sometimes hilarious bit.

Overall, this service gets a total of 10 stars out of 5.

I know tons of independent artists that have spent fortunes to make the perfect album only to realize that they now have to scrape together cash to do all the back-end work like marketing, web presence, touring, distribution, and everything else. I also know artist that are scared of digital technology when it comes to their music. These artists are afraid that their music will be pirated and they’ll never make any money once it goes digital. Wrong! Either embrace digital distribution, or watch your business go the way of the dinosaurs.

Seth makes some brilliant points about the decline of the music industry in general, and they offer a good insight to what the independent artist needs to be focusing (or not focusing) on in today’s market. Go read the full post on his blog, and make sure you grab a feed from it because it is one of the best educational resources on the internet.

Here are my favorite two:

10. Don’t abandon the Long Tail
Everyone in the hit business thinks they understand the secret: just make hits. After all, if you do the math, it shows that if you just made hits, you’d be in fat city.

Of course, the harder you try to just make hits, the less likely you are to make any hits at all. Movies, records, books… the blockbusters always seem to be surprises. Surprise hit cookbooks, even.

Instead, in an age when it’s cheaper than ever to design something, to make something, to bring something to market, the smart strategy is to have a dumb strategy. Keep your costs low and go with your instincts, even when everyone says you’re wrong. Do a great job, not a perfect one. Bring things to market, the right market, and let them find their audience.

Stick to the knitting has never been more wrong. Instead, find products your customers want. Don’t underestimate them. They’re more catholic in their tastes than you give them credit for.

11. Understand the power of  digital
Try to imagine something like this happening ten years ago: An eleven-year-old kid wakes up on a Saturday morning, gets his allowance, then, standing in his pajamas, buys a Bon Jovi song for a buck.

Compare this to hassling for a ride, driving to the mall, finding the album in question, finding the $14 to pay for it and then driving home.

You may believe that your business doesn’t lend itself to digital transactions. Many do. If you’ve got a business that doesn’t thrive on digital, it might not grow as fast as you like… Maybe you need to find a business that does thrive on digital.