Why Most Music Artists Fail

by Joseph Steine

Imagine this. You get together with 2 buddies because you believe you have enough talent to start a profitable record label. You’re the producer, one buddy is the artist and the third guy’s job is to maintain the label website. The three of you are ambitious business partners high on dreams and low on cash. But guess what? You’re still a record label in every sense of the word. And your 3 man team can go head to head with any major label and crush them like a light bulb under a steamroller. I’m going to tell you why.

But let’s first compare your 3 man squad to a major. The majors think they can spit on you and take your lunch money because they have power and people. Reams and reams of people, many of whom don’t do very much. A major label generally consists of production, manufacturing, distribution and promotion. There’s also legal and A&R, but in terms of scale, the first four are really what sets a major apart from an independent.

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There are arguably about 4 of these big boys out there and they churn out some of the most vile acoustic garbage known to man. But they still have all the starry-eyed nobody music artists by the balls. Why? Because of the aura of power they’ve created. They have brow beaten people into believing that if you want to make it in music you have to go through them. You have to ask Daddy for permission. And if you don’t, Daddy’s going to send you to your room without supper.

And I will admit, historically, there has been a very compelling reason to want to attract the attention of major labels because of their marketing power. It’s one area where the majors still have a clear advantage over an independent, but it doesn’t have to be that way. And it has begun to rapidly change in favor of independents for a simple reason.

As you know, an artist signed to a label doesn’t begin making a penny in royalties until all album production costs have been recouped. But people aren’t buying albums these days anyway. So artists aren’t making money. And when it comes to marketing image, artists don’t have all that much control anyway. For some reason major labels have decided that marketing a garbage image like that of Soulja Boy will sell records. But it doesn’t because people aren’t as stupid as the labels think. So the albums aren’t selling, the artists aren’t getting paid and the labels aren’t making squat. Everybody loses…except for the people with talent that the labels have overlooked. These people are making money because they have one indispensable tool at their disposal: Technology.

This is the new reality. The have-nots are taking control, right? To a certain extent. The independent artists have so much power these days because of the Internet and technology, but many don’t know that yet. Many people with dreams of a music career that will support them financially never get to live out those dreams because they either don’t understand or grossly underestimate the immense importance of marketing and selling. If you want to be successful at any kind of business, marketing has to be your top priority hands down.

So how does an artist properly market themselves in order to make sales? This is the $64,000 questions. It's a topic that would require several articles, but let me give you a simple scenario by getting back to our 3 man record label. A small team of 3 people can create a powerful money making machine as long as they have a quality product, self discipline and they make marketing and sales a top priority. The only thing such a team would need is someone to manufacture and distribute CDs if they want to go the CD rather than the mp3 route. Let’s assume they do.

There are many small CD manufacturing businesses out there that one can find through a quick Google search. The team’s already got the production, the artist and the website. The first thing they would need to do is set up a professional looking but simple website with basic information about the group and Pay Pal capability. Then they would carve out a niche audience by promoting themselves tirelessly at clubs, concerts, colleges or on the radio. Wherever they went, they would promote their album aggressively by giving out their website url and collecting as many email addresses as possible.

Through regular email “conversation” with their fans they would begin to develop a rapport with the audience where they could begin to promote and sell their album and other products directly to these people already loyal to them. Out of trust and loyalty these people would begin purchasing their music directly from the site. That’s what Radiohead has done and very successfully.

The point of all this is that to make it you have to be an aggressive, take charge marketer of your brand and your music. You can’t sit around and wait for people to come to you. You can’t sit around and wait for buzz on MySpace. You have to be proactive by making contact with people. Otherwise, nothing happens. Why should anyone pay attention to you unless you give them a reason to? But most artists never ask themselves that question and that’s why most of them fail. It comes down to a lack of passion and motivation.

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