An Indie Musician's Guide to World Domination

Who really gets the money when you buy a cd in a store, or at a show, or online?

First off – I’m not really going to answer that question, and here’s why:

When you buy an album, or a t-shirt, or a concert ticket, you are making a purchase from a business. A musician has structured his or her business in a way they feel is appropriate, and has entered into binding contracts with people they hopefully trust. Those people are providing services which help the artist to further their career in ways that (again, hopefully) are worthwhile to the artist and worth whichever pieces of the pie they’ve made a decision to surrender in exchange for said services. Why should it be up to YOU to decide which employees of the business get paid? You don’t get to walk into McDonalds’, order a Big Mac and then say “..but I want THIS GIRL to get all the money from my purchase, because this sandwich is the work of HER hands and is going to be delicious.”

Besides, if you DID believe that, you’d be delusional to begin with and therefore incapable of making sound fiscal decisions. Big Macs are gross.

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It seems like every week we hear about the next big thing: a new social network, or online service, or application that will change the way we interact with our audiences. A lot of us make the same mistake and immediately click through to our new favorite tool. We enter our credentials, pick a snappy profile pic and username, cut and paste the same biographical info we use on other services, upload some media, announce our new presence on all the OTHER networks… and then sit back and wait for friends and followers to find us.

In the world of social media, more isn’t always better. It’s hard to figure out just where to spend our time and energy, especially when our efforts rarely produce any instantly quantifiable results. When I first started trying to build my band’s online presence and I sized up all the options, I subscribed to what I now think of as the “Dog Licking Itself” approach: if it’s free, and easy, and produces no noticeable negative consequences, well…. why not? Read more