(396) WHEN YOU DON'T HAVE A LABEL YOU MARKET YOURSELF

What does a musical artist do when they don't have a label?

Today there are so many Independent ("Indie") artists who know the answer to that question!

You pay for your own studio time and record not just a demo to send around to agents but a CD for sale on the Internet. You have a web site. You use Social Networking sites to reach your fans. The Internet means that you have potential International Readership. (Just as we've experienced here at WES BRYAN - MY LIFE IN MUSIC - Hello Latvia!)

Today you can be your own company, your own boss, the talent and the marketing department. If you are successful, you make money, and more money than if you had a contract with a label. Sell enough and the major labels may even come calling.

Earlier in this blog I may've mentioned that I was surprised - maybe even shocked - to learn several years ago that I was on the net - the Rockabilly Hall of Fame site and RCS Discography. (Christine calls this "Web Presence.") It took me some time to get used to it. I had lived the life of a private citizen for many years at that point.

Steve Jobs, one of three founders of Apple Computers, has just passed on, and there's been so much media coverage of this inventor and business mogul who became a billionaire. (Christine uses PC's for this blog but swears by Apple.)

In the early 1960's all this was not technologically possible. Wasn't possible for another 30 years or so.

Marketing depended before the age of the Internet on word of mouth - who you knew or who you could network with personally. It was by ads placed individually in newspapers or trade journals or by writers who were syndicated.

Small labels that so many of us depended on often didn't have the marketing power that the big labels did so you had to entertain on live radio programs or television shows.