Indie Artist X
This is an interesting project, to an extent. 6 music industry consultants are providing their services to an un-named, unsigned artist, to help them break through ‘DIY’ methods.
The link above is to the business/ marketing plan, presented as a Google Docs spreadsheet. Each helper has an area of expertise, and between them they cover ‘Awareness’, ‘Commerce’, ‘Fan Development’, ‘Influencers’, ‘Live Shows’ and ‘Website’.
Now, it’s easy enough to poke fun at the plan, which includes game-changing tactics like “Provide regular (weekly if possible) updates to the news section of the website” and “Target the local music press for each tour stop”.
But the thing that makes me laugh most is that, with all these specialist advisors on board, isn’t that a bit like… having a record label? A label who would not only be able to make the exact same suggestions in their dewy-eyed sleep, but also fund that building-of-website and targetting-of-press with a wonderful ‘marketing budget’. Obviously this is done in exchange for a share of royalties, but DIY does seem to mean ‘run your body into the ground due to a total lack of capital’, which takes a lot of the fun out of being in a band, surely.
