DIY musician series (part 3): the many paths to success in music

My view in a nutshell is that new artists who cannot get a (favourable) record deal should go it alone because now he can. Musicians have, over the years, tended to ask a rather boring question, being: "How do I get signed?" The answer to this question used to be a simple (if untrue): be the best and the labels will find you."

Today the answer is not quite so simple. Unsigned artists need Youtube views, Soundcloud streams, facebook fans and twitter followers. They need good compositions, a unique sound and compelling stage presence. There was a time when labels invested in artists with raw talent, developed them from scratch, helped build a team around them, and supported them for a long time before "breaking" them. Today that is no longer generally the case.

The record business has changed, and many labels these days are no longer willing to invest their time and money on completely unknown artists. This is not to say that today's label will not "discover" you if you're good; on the contrary, if you're talented and have commercial appeal, the labels will seek you out. Record labels still (and always) want to sign the "Next big thing," In fact, this is their core function, and is one taken very seriously.

Some artists simply cannot be successful without a major label, and in some entire genres (like orchestral music), this is still unavoidable. But the current system no longer has a "one-size-fits- all" formula for musicians. It rather offers thousands of different solutions, all of which make the business so turbulent, interesting and, indeed, filled with opportunity.

The best advice is, therefore, to stop asking "How do I get signed?" and start asking the more important question: "do I need to get signed?" This is because the record business paradigms that have been in place for decades have shifted. With the new tools, the artist gets to determine who he is as an artist, what his brand is, who his audience should be and which business plan to implement.

There are many paths to success at this moment, and the artist should take the new opportunities presented to him to find out which ones work for him. Perhaps it is a label deal, perhaps not.