Longing for the day ...

The best New Music approach is holistic

Mike Masnick makes a lot of sense when he points out that big concerts are only a fraction of the live concerts staged,and in some ways they are more difficult to run profitably than smaller concerts. He's also right that big tours are not going to work as well for Indies as smaller tours.

A music career needs to GROW. That means, by definition, start small ... most of the activity of Indies will be at the smaller end - but it can still be highly profitable.

Any indie who's serious will recognise this. No-one is gonna hand over a $million to a small act and say "Sure, you have no track record, a tiny fan base and limited capacity, but here's your leg up ..." I rarely happened in the old industry and it ain't gonna happen now.

So the approach needs to aim for holistic growth. No aspect of the business can be overlooked. At first, collecting email addresses at gigs is not a bad substitute for getting paid. Email addresses translate into future income ... don't accept that pay rate forever. Maybe start getting paid at house concerts.

Maybe a little merch at early shows is good - make it available as early and cheaply as possible. Play as many shows as possible at first - the performance and songwriting need to grow as well ...

Give early and cheap recordings away, too ... but make sure you're available for sale because later on the back catalog is gonna be valuable.

And so on ...