Building an Indie Name
November 18, 2006 by Brooke
Filed under Indie Music Blog
Thanks to technology, integrated communication services and other ideas, there isn’t a need to have a million dollars in order to make it! Instead, you can find your own way as an artist with close to nothing. How?
The idea is to network. This is your best market and the easiest way for you to find what you need. Every business or marketing person knows that the way to succeed is through word of mouth. Whether you are just beginning or trying to get to an international level, make sure everyone knows.
Word of mouth includes getting involved in musical things in your community, supporting and finding other artists, collaborating and showing up at networking meetings every once in a while. By doing even one of these, you will have the ability to grow with your name and concept. Before you know it, you won’t have to do anything for your phone to keep ringing for gigs and requests for CDs.
Beyond the value of gold is the value of a good name. When working on your Indie career, keep this in mind and start talking.
If you’re reading this, you must have an internet connection, so don’t forget online networking! Not just myspace - that is very cluttered now, but also facebook, bebo, and, most importantly, local ’scene’ forums.
Find out where your audience hangs out online, and use that as much as possible - if people remember your name, they’ll be more likely to nip in to one of your gigs if they notice you’re performing that night.
There are several subcategories which music from the overall indie scene are often grouped broadly into. Music ranging from alternative rock to punk rock to experimental music has long existed in indie scenes, often independent from one another. Indie rock and indie pop are the most common groupings that conform to an “indie” sound. The difference between these is difficult to pick up from the instrumentation or sound, as both genres include distorted guitar-based music based on pop-song conventions. If anything, the key distinction comes not from instrumentation or structure but from how strictly they follow cultural constructions of rockist “authenticity”.