It’s Difficult to be Indie

It’s Difficult to be Indie.

In my blog “Being an Indie Artist” I have shared how, with the availability of free online streaming, it has become increasingly difficult for indie artists to earn money through downloads. Nobody wants to pay for downloads. iTunes pays 70 cents per download. How many downloads can an average indie artists expect to get for an album? And whatever is earned, has to be divided amongst any number of people. While people are not too willing to pay for a famous song, there is a lesser chance to sell something they haven’t even heard. In addition to this, there are many other problems that indie artists face in their career path, some of which I am going to cover in this blog.

1. Low Royalties

With the availability if free online streaming, number of paid downloads has decreased and the royalties received by an artist have shrunk to an insulting level. In this case, if an indie artist wants to use tools like Spotify to publish their work online, their work does not even earn enough to support them in making another album.

2. Lack of Security

Even if you have made it to the point of being successful, an indie artist’s career has no security. There is no guarantee that your next album will earn as much as the one that made you successful. In this case, unless you have a bond with a famous label, your career is never secure.

Managers and publishers of some famous indie artists see a grim future for the artists, unless they decide to do something else or additional to what they have been doing. Today’s listener is so spoilt for choices that it does not take long for them to switch to next. Even the famous, well established artists have to keep rolling out something new through the labels that that have a contract with, in order to be remembered. It is not difficult to imagine how much more difficult it is for the indie artists.

3. Touring

While your listeners are happy to see you out and performing, constantly, for the young indie artists touring is not easy. When on a self-sponsored music trip, the indie artists are paying for their food, lodging, food and other travel costs. Some have jobs to keep, others have families to run. Indie music does not earn enough money to finance tours. In this case, the only option for the indie artists is to go all out on music and wish for their jobs to still be there when they return. Families mostly stay

4. Options

There are advantages and disadvantages to the Internet age: It’s currently less demanding than any time in recent memory for somebody to make and publish music, however it’s far harder to get noticed. Market is genuinely saturated, making it difficult for lovers of indie music to choose the best among indie artists. Around four million tunes on Spotify have never been touched by subscribers! The manufacturers of the app decided to launch another app to store those tunes. Guess what did they call it? Forgotify.

5. Risk

We are surely going to miss our next Bon Iver. Music companies claim that it is a huge risk to sign an indie artist. They are investing in the artist, without being sure of the returns they are going to get. It is not new to see a flop after a superhit!

The entire system of labels making artists stands reversed. The labels are not making artists. They are, instead, signing bands that are already famous, to ensure security. This makes a patterned trap for indie artists who face a lot of problems in finding promoters for their music and are left with no option but to get enough fans to attract the attention of big labels. In all of this, labels get all the fans that follow an artist that is signed by the label. Isn’t that funny! And unfair.

The only hope is in the fact that music is so important, it cannot stop. The situation is not going to remain the same forever, with copyright being taken more seriously. However, the fact remains that anything good has never been easy. Just that it is far more difficult now than it has ever been.

Please leave your comments for other indie artists to read and benefit from.