Give Indie Music What It Deserves
Be a real fan again.
When looking at today’s music business, especially on a mainstream level, those who consider themselves music lovers instead of just consumers are easily bored, sometimes even offended.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think you have to be a music hipster to feel like that.
It’s obvious to me, that even though there’s a constant overflow of music thrown at us, we’re missing something essentially.
Having quality time with it.
The music industry has turned an artform into a product, a commodity. And we, as listeners, just went along with it, enjoying the short term benefits. But still both sides complain about it.
Thing is, there’s one issue both listeners and artists/music executives complain about hand in hand; The music market is so heavily over-saturated these days, that talent doesn’t get much of a chance on a higher level.
Long gone are the times when it was possible to “discover” somebody on the radio. By discover I mean hearing somebody relatively new on the scene who hasn’t been “casted”.
Since sales of physical copies are becoming less and less relevant, it’s even more unlikely to discover somebody in a record store. Believe me, even writing this feels weird.
Then there are those people, including myself, who tend to complain about the lack of indivivuality and diversity on a mainstream level. Some of us even say “They don’t make music like they used to”. Writing an article proving this saying wrong, made me think about my own approach toward music as well.
There is an urgent need to get the heart and head of real music lovers into play again!
Be a fan, not just a consumer.
There’s so much music for a reasonable price or even for free on the market and countless outlets to find it. Musicians don’t even need labels anymore. Not to say, artists today have to prove themselves without a label before even being taken into consideration for signing by an label executive. More and more artists have realized the power in this, remaining independent artists and just signing distribution deals.
Now it’s on us to invest, mainly time. If we want the market to become more diverse, we have to take actions into our own hands. The kind of action the labels are taking is thinning their artist portfolio, exploiting boosting the few left, but not investing in talent.
There are many artist doing great on an independent level. Actually they’re doing so well and there are so much more to come, thanks to the digital revolution, that the idea of major labels might become obsolete in a not so distant future.
Give them a chance. Invest your time and interest. Widen your search on a local, national and international level.
Be open for people and styles you maybe weren’t into so far.
We created the problem together and that’s our part of the teamwork.
