Perfecting Indie Art.
An indie artist does not have a major label, a publicist or a manager behind him for support. All of us are lone rangers. You put in a lot of effort in making a good song (which is excellent), you spend so much money in recording it, you even book shows to sing the song, or sometimes agree to perform for free, just so people know your song. All of this is great. But my friend, who will do the promotions? As I have said in my post Indie Artist- A Lone Performer, you cannot wait for luck to knock at your door. This is your business and if it is not bringing returns, know that you are missing something.
The artist etiquette is to achieve success, no matter what it takes. You are into this with a lot of others and you’ve got to outperform them if you want to excel. All of you are each required to promote your work, your shows and your performances. It is the unspoken rule.
And think about it this way, why spend years recording your album, months perfecting your songs, , and thousands of dollars on equipment, when you are not planning to ensure people know about the existence of your songs? I know marketing has always been a puzzle for indie artists. I have written about this in detail in my post Realise The Change in Marketing, regardless of all the advances in the online tools available to us, we are still advised to invest in PR. While we often consider making our lives easier and getting a PR firm to do all the marketing work for us, there are two problems here. One, we do not have enough money to hire them. Two, we do not trust them to be of any substantial benefit.
So, what options are you left with? Social networking and live shows. Still, in spite of doing whatever you can, when it comes to sharing this music with an audience, your interest is significantly diminished. It is because artists are generally shy people and mostly keep to themselves and their art, until their work calls for socializing. And when it does, most of us are not too eager to answer the call. You owe it to yourself to try harder.
If it feels like a burden, it must be handled by you. Post each event on your calendar, invite your fans to the Facebook event, and share the event with your newsletter subscribers. Know that if your hard work is going to pay off only when you can manage to bring fans out to a show. That is where you make new fans and hopefully sell some CDs.
There are certain venues that pay you upfront, certain shows that you don’t have to promote; the venue provides the audience. Such shows are a great opportunity for you to win the hearts of the audience. They are easy and pay your bills. But if you really want to utilize the golden opportunity, you would keep some CDs and merch ready to be sold to whoever wants to buy it at the venue, after your performance. Let the new fans carry home something physical from you, to remind them of you and look up for you online and purchase your music.
However, there are also some club show where the booker threatens to excommunicate you if you fail to deliver in heads. The coffeehouses that have supposedly put an extra employee on staff for the night just because they thought the place would be busier than usual, in light of your performance. The small theatre that took a chance on your show even though they didn’t recognize your name. These are some places that you have to really work hard for. And this is the time when you really need to put in all the effort that you possibly can. Forget about the last gig that didn’t go so well. Everyone gets discouraged at some point. But remember, there’s a difference between a small turnout due to bad weather, and a small turnout because you didn’t care enough to try. And remember, the bookers and venue managers know this.
Another important point that I have discussed in my earlier post Fans or Friends?, your friends are not your fans. Your best friend, the chicks in your knitting class or your roomie; they can’t come to every show. They don’t have to. When your friends start skipping your performances, you start believing that they don’t care about you. Think again. Is it possible that they care about you but they don’t care about your profession? You must understand that not everyone is as passionate about music as you are. Your friends don’t have to attend all your performances. After all, they are your friends, not your fans. If you’re not building an actual fan-base, then you`ll never grow your audience which mean you will never grow your career.
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