It’s Tough Running A Small Independent Label With Great Talent And No Money

I try to find creative ways in marketing but sooner or later you hit a wall. Usually when you drop and EP or a CD you may get a spike in sales at the beginning then there’s a sharp drop off. At this time you have to be even creative and professional in getting enough people to take notice of what your doing with what your trying to sell. Here in lies the dilemma as in any business or entrepreneurship, you start by looking to secure capital or and investor when your ready to put your marketing/branding plan into action. If you make the choice of bringing someone in, then you stand to lose a good amount of control over your projects. This can be good and bad, in my case bad and I’ll tell you why. I’ve put together a marketing/branding plan and was consistent enough to get the artist ready to shine, meaning making enough buzz and bring more attention to higher music industry professionals, the person I’ve brought in project had there own dreams and aspirations on the artist and tried to take the artist whole marketing plan in a different old dated direction. Swearing and being stubborn about how to make the artist more successful. Meanwhile systematically tearing down relationships the the artist and I’ve built to get this point. Even tearing down the relationship between the artist and I by filling there ears with b.s.  So your taken real risk by bring someone into the situation on the 11 hour.

What I’m really trying to say is really vet a person or persons before you do business with them and only work with people you feel comfortable with. There will be always a little tension in the air when doing business that is a insanely passionately but you should always keep people around you that if these situations go down, you can get through and move on and build and grow from there.

The vetting doesn’t stop there either you have to also do this for the artist who you work with because as you start making the artist more popular you will see a change in them. Now the kind of change should be a good change meaning more engaging to fans and business exec’s. You want no divas and you want to make sure they keep listening to also. of course you want there input in how you grow a project but should work with them thinking they know it all and don’t need you. At that point in time it’s time for you to move on.

Fortunately I’ve been lucky and talented enough that I can always reproduce, replace and recreate. If you want to know where I’m currently at, check some of the talent on indiggochild’s website.

In conclusion I’d like to say I wrote this to show you some of the crazy things I’ve went through in order that you can save time, energy and money when putting out a musical project. These things are just one aspect of many things in making a project successful.