Music Biz Basics -1
Music Biz Basics -1
Before you do anything with your music, you may want to clarify a few things. The first is “What do you want to accomplish?” In your own head the answer is simple and obvious. You want a record deal of course. Now, do you want a record deal for yourself or your band? Do you prefer an independent label or a major label? How about an all-digital label? Or maybe as an independent artist you just want to do everything on your own and are just looking for investment capital? Or maybe you just want a career in music? Which brings me back to, “what do you want?” Do you even know all that is available to you, like a label deal, production deal, distribution deal, publishing deal or one-off? Whew! Well, like I said, you need to figure out what you want. You may want to start by finding out what each of these aforementioned items is and what exactly they entail. Research the music business. Find out specifically who does what and where you want to send your music when you are ready. This way you will not waste time and money by sending material arbitrarily to every record label. Spend at least one hour per day researching online and book marking pages for reference. Now you can start moving in the right direction.
When it comes to your music, you need to know how to categorize yourself and how to describe yourself. Your genre is important to industry people. Your description will help you with your image and your marketing. A great way to figure out what genre you are in is to use Billboard magazine. Billboard lists the charts of top recordings and artists each week for different genres according to how the record companies categorize artists. Go through the charts and find the artists that you most identify with musically and let their genre be your genre. Next draw from this to come up with two or three sentences that describe your sound or CD if you have one. When someone asks you what kind of music do you do you MUST have an answer, a clear and succinct answer. Do not spew about how your music is totally unique and doesn’t sound like anybody or anything else, or how it is a mix of R & B, Jazz, Reggae, and even Country. It is great to have people help you with your description. The way others see and hear you is vital for you to know.
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