The Indie Guide to Radio.
The music industry has evolved at the speed of light in the past few decades. I have written about this in my blog Survival of the Indie Artist. The sooner you realize that you are on your own in this world of pay-to-play radio, the better it is going to be for you. No major is going to come knocking at your door just because you are good and they want to make you rich. If you are good at your work, learn the other traits of this business, if you want to become successful. Simple.
No talent scout will ride into your gig on a white horse to discover and rescue you from the maze of talent that this industry is overflowing with. The indie artists better wake up and realize this. You are the only one who will discover you. Along with high quality music, you will require a lot of hard work, a good website for yourself or the band, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube videos, and as much networking as you can achieve. If you do not have a website yet, there are companies like Hyper Effects that can help you with this. Hyper Effects is one stop for your website, marketing and cyber development requirements. It helps you to create a website to display your talent or sell your indie music or indie art.
Hard work, for today’s indie artist means obtaining a larger fan base. Thereafter, finding a good promotion and distribution company that will hopefully get you a good label with world radio contacts that will run an effective campaign for you. As I have written in my blog How to Become a Better Indie Artist, getting a publisher for your work helps indie artists. Producers charge exorbitantly, true, get them still. They will make sure you are connected to someone who knows more than you about making records. It is always good to know the experts. You get to learn by absorbing all the knowledge and become better at art. You would rather make great records than collect musical instruments with the money that you plan to save.
There are many radio promotion companies but they will charge around $2500 for a 350-station college radio campaign. What is required for an indie artist is a record label that has its own radio promotion arm that will split the costs of promotion with them. During these times the artist will have to be prepared to split promotion costs or die a slow death. Realise the need of the hour and be savvy enough to grab such opportunity, if you find it. Forget complaining about paying for your own promotion. If a label is willing to split the cost of promotion you better jump and grab the deal on that deal. I understand that today’s generation is listening to music via YouTube and other direct streaming platforms. I have written about this in detail in my blog Importance of Radio. You would think that you are more likely to be discovered on one of these platforms. You are mistaken. Discovery tends to happen through other channels. Nielsen reported that 48% of people discovered music mostly through the radio; YouTube scored a mere 7%, in 2012. In 2014, Nielsen reports that radio listenership went from 243.7 million weekly listeners in 2013 to 244.4 million in 2014. The key factor cited by them is the localization of stations and their curated content, making it very easy for the radio to get interwoven in peoples’ lives. Now that is something to keep in mind while planning a music tour.
Earning a living from music. It’s what every indie musician and band wants. But it can be hard, particularly for indies. With fierce competition, huge supply of music and the money flowing in the industry at an all-time low, with the younger generations only wanting to stream and buy pirated copies, physical sales are declining. Only the most incredible artists are able to make ends meet through just record sales.
I will soon follow up with an article about alternative income streams. This was intended to be a part of a general article about managing and exploiting your musical repertoire and find alternative ways to generate income from your music. Please leave your comments. They are my inspiration.
