Nice post Threemae :rolleyes:
Well here’s some advice from someone who was signed.
I’ve produced hip hop/trip hop for years, and believe me there’s a market for it. If someone thinks they can make a buck off of it, they’ll find the “market” to stick you in.
Along with a few friends, we made tons of music, mostly just for the hell of it. The type of music we made was much pretty tough to replicate on stage, so we would just mess around in our houses. We made a bunch of songs and gave them out to our friends, who I guess passed them along. Well one of those tapes ended up in Tricky’s hands, and we got a phonecall one day, and the next thing we knew, we were signed. Of course working on our first album led to inner quarreling, and we ended up tanking the deal ourselves, but that’s another story.
The point is make your music, and get it out into the world. Everyone I know who was signed, did it through getting heard in some fashion, be it by handing CDs out on the bus, or playing out a lot. And before you read any further let me mention this. DON’T SEND MUSIC TO RECORD LABELS, YOU’LL BE WASTING THE CD. Record labels don’t accept what they call “unsolicited” tapes, in fact they don’t even open the package. They do this because they used to get lawsuits from people claiming they were ripped off because Eminem would say “fuck that” or something at the end of a song, and they happened to say it at the beginning. Of course 99% of the time they are 2 totally different songs, but to protect themselves, the label decided not to even open the packages. The only way a label will listen to music now is through one of their A&R people, or from an entertainment lawyer (they do more then regular lawyers) with ties to them. They will also listen to recommendations from their artists, which is what happened to us. There are a few labels that do take unsolicited music, not any of them major, and you can usually find out by going to a label’s website.
So, going back to getting signed is essentially getting your name out there as best you can. Print up some shirts and go hand them out for free, or sell them dirt cheap with a CD included. Plaster up stickers with your name and website. Network around your music scene, someone from it will get signed, if it ain’t you, it’s still good to be tight with the people that did.
At the end of the day though, if you don’t know anyone, I will say it’s very difficult to get signed, in fact it’s like winning the lottery, so keep a few eggs in a different basket. Limp Bizkit was signed because Fred was their tattoo artist and slipped them a tape one day. The father of the lead singer of the Strokes owns a huge modeling agency. Norah Jones is the daughter of Ravi Shankar. Lenny Kravitz is the son of Roxie Roker (the Jeffersons) and the list goes on and on. Most of these people were already one or two degrees away from someone in the music industry who could help them out. Are you?
Now we won’t even get into the nightmare of once a band is signed, because getting signed and being successful are totally different. Getting signed essentially means a label is willing to give you some money and develop you into something they think they can market and make money off of. Once you make your album, they don’t even have to release it, they can just say “ummm nah, this isn’t going to work out, give us our money back”. This actually happens quite often, and let me tell you, owing a label $20,000 and being right were you were before you were signed, sucks bigtime. A few developed acts will get picked up by the label, but most will fade into obscurity after their first album, perhaps breaking even, but most of the time still owing some costs. The label charges you for everything, (even shit like the napkins at your record release party, and they get the good stuff), lawyers, transportation, etc., so even after a few albums you are generally still in the hole. Now everyonce in a great while (usually a couple of years) an act will rise through it’s particular genre and rise to superstardom, in electronica / triphop this would be someone like Radiohead or Portishead. This happens though a sheer combination of luck, talent, will, marketability, divine intervention, etc.
I’m only 30 and I feel too old to deal with all the above crap, so I make music just for hobby thesedays.
You’re better off playing the lottery, so I would make the music for fun, and keep my day job.