THE MUSIC BUSINESS TODAY

The music industry is changing, and it has changed in the last few years. The music business is in serious transition now. The days of effectively shopping an artist to record companies is coming to an end. Retail stores are slowly going out of business. Record Sales are down. So what hope is there for artists now?

There is huge potential for artists! It's a fantastic time, but the music business has changed. It is no longer cost effective or even smart for a record company to sign a new artist, spend tons of money on retail promotion and maybe see the same money back that was invested. It simply doesn't make any sense. We are living in a digital world now and we must start to prepare for it. That means that instead of being discovered (old school music business) you must truly be independent and become the aggressive entrepreneurial artist now (new school music business).

You must educate yourself about the new ways of doing business in music and rise to the occasion. Only the strong will survive now and I firmly believe that only the smart will have longevity. We must become Internet marketers and learn how to drive traffic to our web sites and partner with other forward thinking music moguls, managers, promoters, and creative thinkers. The 'geek' can truly inherit the earth. There is a bright future if you want to embrace the new world of the music business. But you must do away with the old school ways and prepare for the new day. It is upon us.

"A&R" traditionally, has stood for "Artist & Repertoire", a term for record label reps who are designated the task of developing acts, honing their skills and pointing them in the right direction. This is fast becoming an antiquated idea. That labels are developing artists at all is now barely something to be entertained. From here on out, as far as you, the indie artist are concerned, "A&R" should now stand for "Armed & Ready". You are about to enter a new musical arena, and you will need as much information that pertains to this new state of play as you can possibly get.

A  fellow artist manager said to me a while ago, "Jim, from here on, try not to sign record deals for your artist, but license their music to different territories and keep the  masters. Look for interesting ways to get your music to the masses. The Internet, sales at live venues, TV, movie, ring tones, jingles, etc". This was sound advice and is the new direction.

And my personal advice to your band is to build your fan base. Have people sign up on your mailing list at gigs, and build your database. Study Internet marketing and ways to get traffic to YOUR web site. Use remote sites (such as MySpace.com, Facebook, etc.) to attract new fans and get them to signup on your list at YOUR web site. Understand that remote sites (such as My Space) may be out of business within a matter of years so you HAVE to work your own domain, but most of all your own opt in list. (Imagine you had 100,000 people on your subscriber list. You make a new CD and you can be guaranteed about 30,000 sales right out of the box!). Utilize timed auto responders to sell your merchandise to your fans. Automate all of this as much as possible so you can take care of the creative stuff.

Take control of your career's direction now. You have nobody to answer to you but yourself. Don't get left behind!