This post is a continuation of the Do It Yourself Music Business Hustle I.
Compile your best songs and attempt to put together your own album. Try to be different and make unique music. Once this is done, it is critical to move on to the next phase of the DIY Music Guide and that is to build an audience and build a fan base. This is NOT done the way artists thought it to be done on Myspace. Do NOT go putting your music on other people’s myspace as a comment. Do NOT go sending your music to DJ’s on Twitter via zshare links. Do NOT get an email of all the DJ’s that your boy has and send them emails promoting you as the next Drake and new coming of Hip Hop. This does NOT work and only makes everyone pissed off.
What do you do then if that seemed like the sure fire way to get noticed and the cheap way and every one tells you to utilize social media and facebook to promote yourself? You must find someone around you that has some money or work yourself to do this next part. You must find a sponsor who will help you pay for advertisements on Facebook and Myspace. If you’re utilizing Facebook primarily, you can create a Fan Page on there and upload your tracks to Facebook. You can also easily put your music up on iTunes via a digital distributor such as The Orchard.
The Orchard will create an account for you and allow you to upload your tracks. As a distributor, they will then get your tracks on all major online music retailers including iTunes, Walmart, Napster, etc. Your tracks will be in the online retailers. But being in the retailers and being found in iTunes is still like being on an island. No one knows you’re actually stranded on the island. You must promote yourself. Experiencing sell through of your music is the toughest part of the music industry. Having people buy your music is NOT easy even if you’re music is great. In order to get 1,000 people to click on your music you must have at least 1,000,000 people see your advertisement. This is NOT a joke and no exaggeration. The only way to truly move any type of record and get people’s interest is to literally pay in advertising or pay the DJ to spin your record.
Music is a very crowded market as seen and evidenced by the proliferation of artists on Myspace. Myspace pretty much went to crap from all the artists on their promoting their music via comments and posting bulletins. The truth of the matter is that to really get a deal like Drake you must be able to show a record company that you have sales in some form or another. You either have sales from shows or you have sales from a reputable digital distributor such as The Orchard. You will get a recording contract if you walk into a label and show them the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet report showing that you have had 2,000 ringtone downloads from iTunes in the last 3 months, and 5,000 album sales from online retailers in the last 3 months. If you cannot prove this, you will NOT be entertaining a recording contract or top flight management from Chris Lighty and Violator Management.
You must have provable sales numbers that you can show to people when you go to a pitch meeting. Do NOT focus on a recording contract. Focus on marketing and selling your music. Focus on raising money to run your advertisements on these social networks such as Myspace, Facebook, and others. And again, you must REACH millions of people and get thousands of clicks on your website or song. This is the business side of music. Music is NOT about entertaining people because you have a passion for the craft. Music is about reaching the masses and proving to labels that you can reach this audience. You are forced to generate big numbers that start by reaching smaller numbers and building up a musical tsunami for yourself.
