john

Hi Jon, welcome to Songstuff!

Hi Chris, welcome to Songstuff!

Hi and welcome to Songstuff

hi and welcome to Songstuff

We have just added a new article to our ever growing library. How To Survive In Today's Music Business Recession Jazz and blues singer, 2011 HMMA nominee (Hollywood Music In Media Awards), Songstuff author Cheryl Hodge shares 3 secrets of her ongoing success within the music industry. Cheryl has years of experience within the music industry as a performer, songwriter and as a vocals professor. Luckily Cheryl shares her wisdom with other performers via Songstuff! Read the article - "How To Survive In Today's Music Business Recession" Note If you have any feedback on this article or questions about some of the points raised then please reply to this topic. Letting authors know what you find useful and not useful not only lets authors know that people read and appreciate their willingness to help their fellow musicians and music business professionals, but it also helps our site authors and site developers to deliver more of what you want and need. Please share this article with your friends and fellow music industry professionals, +1 it on Google, like it on Facebook etc. Your willingness to share our articles (or any page) helps our community to grow and evolve. Growing our readership is a benefit to all our members and indeed to our visitors as well!

Hey Shaun, welcome to Songstuff! Nice intro

hi and welcome to Songstuff!

hey Skub welcome to Songstuff!

Hi Psyve! Welcome to Songstuff

Hi Melissa, welcome to Songstuff!

Hi Mick! Welcome to Songstuff Glad you like the ole place I can't believe it either! Well there's lots of songwriting members up for collaborating, take a look in the collaboration board to find some to get started with. I would recommend that you register you songs with the US Copyright Office. They have an online portal for song submissions. It's about $35 a submission, but then submissions can be collections of songs not just single songs. I know that you are in the UK and strictly speaking you do not need to register your songs for UK copyright law, but as you are doing this online it covers many jurisdictions, and the largest in internet terms is USA. It's simply the largest market.

Hi, welcome to Songstuff Luka

Hi Brandon, welcome to Songstuff

welcome to Songstuff

Hi Mark, Welcome to Songstuff!

Hey J3 welcome to Songstuff

hey trip welcome to Songstuff

hi and welcome to Songstuff

hey, welcome to Songstuff!

Hi Alex, welcome to Songstuff! An interesting start! lol Well here's hoping Songstuff can help you find your musical muse!

Hi and welcome to Songstuff Blake. nice intro

Hi and welcome to Songstuff!

Hey Alex! Excellent! Great to see you joining up! Alex, meet everybody, everybody this is Alex. All round nice guy, and a great musician. I'm looking forward to hearing your new tracks dude! Cheers John

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.