In my recent Facebook post, I asked: “WHY DOES SHAKTI HAVE SO MANY ARMS?” It was a rhetorical question, because she obviously must be an INDEPENDENT ARTIST!
Many of you are asking me when is my next album coming out? That is an excellent question because 1) I am thrilled that you want more of my music 2) I need to answer some of those questions myself!
Over the years, having worked as an indie artist either next to a day job or full time, I’ve learned that before a song appears to be freely enjoyed on Soundcloud, Youtube or as a shared mp3 file, there’s a hell of a lot of work that goes into it!
And that’s not only on the artistic level (which includes studying, practicing, writing, voice training, performing or recording (and learning how to work with all that recording hardware and software)) but especially on the not-so-artistic managerial level – though one can make an art of anything.
It was after reading this article, that I suddenly saw the amount of work we, indie artists, do, without often even thinking about it. So in honor of all the indies, who work their asses off to bring beautiful music to the world, here’s our
Incomplete Neverending Task List:
– Social media (posting, analyzing, replying to posts on Twitter, Facebook,
Instagram, Youtube)
– Designing flyers, banners and other PR materials
– Marketing
– Advertising
– New gig research
– Dealing with computer issues
– Website updates and maintenance
– Contact list/database management
– Writing newsletters
– Corresponding with colleagues and industry contacts
– Learning and staying current on trends affecting our work as musicians
– Concepts and research for new projects
– SEO optimization (getting found in search engines)
– PR and media outreach
– Contacting venues and/or event organizations with performance offers
– Writing performance offers
– Accounting (or at least keeping track of the paperwork)
– Writing grant or sponsorship proposal
– Copyright and Legal Questions
– The list goes on…
In other words, what used to be run by the entire record label, is often run by a One Person Record Label = me = an OPRL (not to be confused with OPRAH, OPEL or OPAL…).
And when I look at it from that perspective, I suddenly feel like I just wrote up a list of positions that MY COMPANY IS HIRING for! And you know what, I AM HIRING! At this point, on volunteer basis in exchange for sharing your work with my audience and an interview via Facebook Live where you get to promote what you do to my audience!
If you want to be a part of my team, just CONTACT ME and let me know how you’d like to contribute to help me bring out more records, concerts, videos, merch or other cool stuff!
AS FOR SOCIAL MEDIA (notice I’m yelling here 🙂 – You can also simply SHARE my posts whenever you feel like it! Social media has a HUGE (prononounce “yuuudj“) impact on helping indie artists with reaching new audience! So thank you, for every share <3
In my next blog post, I will be sharing with you more options how you can support my work as an indie singer/songwriter, performer, composer, human. Thank you <3