The Simple Principles Of Building A Successful Musical Career
How a deal with the right record label can bring you closer to your dream level of success
The story of Chance The Rapper, pictured as the armored knight defeating the greedy record label monster, has sparkled the imagination of many independent artists for the past 4 years. And now, more than ever, it looks even easier to achieve a certain level of success based on the DIY principle. Everywhere you look, there are digital distribution services willing to guarantee you “visibility and plays”. Everybody knows how to pitch relevant playlists and we’re pretty sure you all know someone who knows someone who could plug your songs to a list of radio stations with a huge influence among their audience.
Yet, the “don’t let the record labels rip you off, man, you can do it by yourself” approach doesn’t seem to work but for a selected few, Chance The Rapper included. The exceptions that usually confirm the rule. On a larger, international scale, you can see a pattern that applies to most of the success stories that involve musicians. And this pattern revolves around record labels: big, small, independent, bedroom labels, music corporations, digital only, vinyl only. It is an ecosystem that has polished itself to perfection in years and years, no matter the sudden “climate” changes, be it MTV, Napster, Spotify or some exotic virus putting the world on hold.
How does an independent artists fit into this ecosystem, in order to achieve success, as related to his own crowd, territory or musical genre? We put up a few principles, empirical per se, that would help build a foundation for an artist career.
Be honest with yourself when it comes to your music. Or maybe humble is a more suitable word. Evaluate your level of popularity in the most sincere way possible.
Find a label that is willing to give you more attention than anyone else, when it comes to your music. Your aim is to be a top priority for the record label, no matter how big or small it is. In times when resources are limited, almost everyone will go for the safest bet and leave the somehow risky experiments for the moments when stability will return in place.
Speaking of priority, maybe a big label will offer you a contract. But chances are you’ll be nothing more than a cell in a spreadsheet entitled “Volume Sales”. So, why become a sheep in a big name herd when you can be the leading voice for a smaller company?
Let the smaller indie label do the work in pitching your music to the bigger labels. Instead of investing in huge and expensive A&R departments, big and major labels are using a network of smaller labels that do the hunting and growing for them.
Those success stories you see everywhere you look (with Justin Bieber breaking through with just a Youtube video) are exceptions from the general rule. After all, an indie artist who struggled to get a good record deal so he could tour outside his hometown is not the emotional story you’d share on your facebook, right? So prepare to take small steps on climbing the fandom mountain.
With the incredible amount of music being released every day (let’s dump the 40k songs per day story and turn it into the 1 song on every 2 seconds), imagine how many submissions on every freaking communication channels are most of the relevant labels / playlists receiving per day?! Our most recent talk with Soave Records gave us a hint: it’s around “hundreds of tracks per day”. So, your email sent to demos@bigrecordlabels.com would be like a drop in the ocean. Instead, acknowledge your popularity level and aim for the proper ears to listen to your music.
Focus on building a loyal fanbase. This could bring you enough traction and streams to get noticed by the proper record label or playlist.
Bottom line? Find the right partner to join your musical journey. Even Chance The Rapper is not so independent after all, being represented by Cara Lewis, an agent working for Kanye West and Eminem, while cashing 500K USD from Apple Music for a 2 weeks exclusivity for one of his most recent mixtapes.