Retrospectively, it seems I was an ‘indie’ pioneer a quarter of a century ago. We operated outside of the normal model. Did everything in-house. We produced our own independent recordings and booked our own gigs. A week or so prior to each gig (determined by lead-times), I would send a small crew of musicians ahead to do guerilla street performances and cause trouble – providing photo opportunities and a news focus for local media and doing radio interviews and such to promote the impending show. We had independent distribution into specialist retail but (of course) did our biggest sales volumes at gigs. This income basically covered all the office and administration costs while gigs provided our wages. There were twenty-five happy people on the pay-roll.
When we eventually moved into the big-boys arena of the established music industry and started gambling with larger label deals, we in effect surrendered control of merchandise, lost that cash-flow, and things started to go wobbly – it marked the beginning of the end.
I noticed too that the media who were generally very supportive and generous because of our renegade status became much less so once professional publicists became involved.
Back then, that had all been what was considered alternative strategy.
At the turn of the millenium, when I arrived at MIDEM to discover the leading key-note conference issue was ring-tones, I realised even the traditional business models were becoming very strange and weirdly desperate for cash.
Now that I still persist in producing independent art-music rather than pandering to popular tastes, and the market generally has been shrivelling, I am struggling to sell what I have and attempting to focus more on income streams issuing from third-party placements – which is about as normal and traditional an area of business as you can get, relatively new to me and, because of the low dime situation everywhere else, increasingly crowded with competition. I have also become more jealous and mean about getting my shake of royalty income - and increasingly grumpy about efforts on all sides to restrict my entitlements.
I don’t have any kind of effective or sustained internet strategy because I can’t afford the full-time commitment and maintenance it requires to be of real value. But I do have a plan if and when it becomes possible.
On one hand, my energy is definitely flagging for the constant up-hill struggle.
On the other hand – as far as song-writing goes – I am doing my best work as an old git.
Ultimately my strategy is to die and become posthumously successful.