Indie Band Survival Guide: The Complete Manual for the Do-It-Yourself Musician

INTRODUCTIONWELCOME toThe Indie Band Survival Guide, a practical how-to manual to get your music heard, distributed, sold, booked, promoted, and seen. In the past, you could only do all of this with the backing of a major record label, but you can now do it on your own. We'll tell you how to get started and walk you through the process.This book is for all musicians, from hobbyists to professionals. It's also for managers, bookers, labels, promoters, recording engineers, music teachers, music-video directors, filmmakers, and anyone else who works with music. In fact, many of the methods we share here are useful for any creative endeavor; you don't have to be a musician to get a lot out of thisGuide. But our focus is on how each topic relates to music. For instance, when we explain how to create Web sites, we specifically cover the creation ofmusicWeb sites, even though the principles of good Web-site design we share are applicable to any site.The information in this book is applicable to musicians of all ages, from teens starting their first garage band to retirees who have rediscovered their love of music and want to share it with the world. It will be indispensable to you whether or not you have a lot of experience with the Internet. TheGuidewill explain how to use all of the talents that you already have and supplement them with tools, techniques, and a network of people to accomplish what was only possible for major-label bands in the past.More than anything, at the heart of this book are essential techniques for getting your music to the world.WHO ARE "WE" ANYWAY?"We" are lead members of Beatnik Turtle, an indie band with more than a decade of experience, more than a dozen albums, a song that was licensed to Disney for a commercial campaign, years of live shows, college-radio play, countless podcast plays (we'll explain podcasts, don't worry), theater shows at venues such as Second City, TV theme songs, music videos, Web sites, and a completed Song of the Day project where we released one song each day for a year. In case you're curious, all things Beatnik Turtle can be found at www.beatnikturtle.com.We are two working professionalsan IT expert and an attorneyand we've brought all the knowledge and experience from our respective fields to bear on this book, just as you will learn to take advantage of your own skills in making your band a success. Thanks to our backgrounds, the two of us are just as inclined to discuss the state of the music industry or the future of in de pen dent music as we are to actually sit down and jam.In the end, though, we are indie musicians with a band. We generated the material in this book by actually solving the problems we discuss here. In fact, this is the book we wish we'd had when we started out over a decade ago. For instance, when we wrote the section about how to submit your music to podcasts, we recorded the steps we'd been using for years, then did another round of submissions to test and refine the process.So when we say "we," we're talking to you as one musician to another.WHAT YOU NEED TO GET STARTEDWe're going to cover alotof topics, but we're going to take for granted that you know how to sing and/or play your instruments, and that you have your own music to perform. You might do cover songs, or you might write your own music, but, either way, we assume that you should already have that ready to go.Finally, we assume you know how to use a computer and possess at least basic Web skills. We aren't going to spend a lot of time explaining what hyperlinks are or how to use a Web browser. Many of the opportunities that have opened up for musicians in the last few years are on the Web, so you'll be uChertkow, Randy is the author of 'Indie Band Survival Guide: The Complete Manual for the Do-It-Yourself Musician' with ISBN 9780312377687 and ISBN 0312377681.