Hey
Many people within the main stream music industry now recommend new bands to develop themselves as indie artists rather than going the route of signing to a label. At least for the early part of a band career.
It makes complete sense for both the artist AND the labels. If you go the route of labels at some later point you come to them with a ready made fanbase.
One word of warning on that aspect: Any songs you release independently are likely NOT to be released by the label. The reason is simple. When you first release a new song there is a huge peak in sales. Fans want something new. As a result, all your indie releases will not have that peak. Or at least the peak will be a lot less.
It's not all roses in the indie garden though. The internet has levelled the playing field, so much so that it's been a double edged sword. There are now so many bands and artists out there, all fighting for attention, wanting to be noticed that it's difficult to be seen in the crowd never mind stand out. It takes a lot of money, giving up any other sort of life for years or both. Yes you have access to tools (though many are crap) to help you, but then, so does everyone else.
It's not just bands and solo artists either. It's everyone who picked up a guitar, plugged it in for the first time and recorded it and posted it on the web (watch me play smoke on the water! ), kids playing guitar on their playstation, girls singing along with a karioki recording, software written songs with auomatic autotune created with standard rythms and loops they personally selected when they hit the "create a song button"... and yes we've had members in all of those categories. Fair play to them, we all started as musicians somewhere... the point is that there are millions and millions of them. All screaming "see me", "Hear me". Oh yes, and then there's the generic attention whores who demand your time to watch them do things that leave you thinking "That's 5 minutes of my life I won't get back".
So yes, Indie is the choice to go for, but it leaves musicians with a bitter pill to swallow. The thing is, I haven't even mentioned the bitter pill yet!
What is it?
Simple. If you want to even have a chance at succeeding in this YOU HAVE TO LEARN ABOUT THE BUSINESS SIDE OF MUSIC!
Not only that, but you have to wash down the bitter pill with a lot of work, on and offline. That means developing skills, creating plans, being coordinated, understanding contracts and music law, marketing and promotion... the list goes on.
If only there was some online place where you could learn all of the above. *coughs*
If only. *cough cough*
One can but dream....
Unless of course you have the balls to make it reality.