Independent Music Advice

Welcome to Independent Music Advice, the number one music advice resource for anyone who makes independent music. We provide quality guides and tips for independent musicians wishing to learn the music business inside out. Through this site we hope to empower more musicians to make money from their music career independently, and without the help of a record label.

On our sister site (Music Industry How To), we now also offer a step by step study course for musicians wanting to make more money and gain more fans from their music career.

We've got a lot of useful information coming for you over the next few months, so
sign up to the mailing list so you don't miss a thing! You'll also get a free ebook, & exclusive weekly guides & tips. Enjoy :)

Shaun,
Independent Music Advice

A Preparation Guide For Your First Live Performance

This is a guest post from Andy Chubb. If you are an experienced musician / business person with a working knowledge of the music industry (And something useful to share), please consider contributing to this site.

Prepare For Live Performances

Playing your first gig can be a very nerve racking experience. Whether it’s in front of a few friends or in front of a room full or strangers, it’s not easy to escape those first gig nerves. They can have you feeling terrible right until the ‘dreaded’ experience is over, at which point you’ll realise the actual performance wasn’t that bad. But the nerves leading up to it? Well, that part isn’t quite so fun.

A lot of the time, nerves come due to a lack of organisation and not knowing what to expect. While you can’t fully know what to expect on your first gig, being prepared can go a long way in helping ease those nerves.

I thought it might be a good idea to write down a few hints and tips for those who are going to play their first gig. As a reasonably experienced musician myself, I would like to pass on some advice that will hopefully help others out. If you find these tips useful, please share them on your favourite social networking sites, or leave a comment below.
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Why You Should Never Give Out Your Music For Free

You should not give your music out for free

Giving out you music for free is a waste of time.

Yes I know, this goes against everything you’ve been taught so far. We all know how hard it is to sell your music to new fans, so the obvious step seems to be giving out loads of freebies until people are ready to buy your music right? Ummm, wrong!

The thing is, giving your music out for free can actually be doing more harm then good. By doing this, musicians are reinforcing the view that music should be free for listeners. In actual fact, musicians have as much right to make money by benefiting other people’s lives as anyone else does. Would someone makes board games just to give them out for free? Would a cleaner clean a hotel if they weren’t getting paid? Would a bus driver allow free passengers just because they enjoy driving? No, no, and NO!
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8 Reasons Email Marketing Will Boost Your Music Career

Email Marketing For Musicians

Welcome to email marketing for musicians. Building a mailing list is one of the most important things you can do to boost your music career. By getting people on your mailing list, you can quickly and easily communicate with your fans, and keep them informed about your going ons. Fans are what push you forward in terms of how well known you are and how much money your music career brings in. Because of this, communicating with them as effectively as possible should be a top priority of yours.

In this article we look at the importance of collecting email addresses for your mailing list, and how you can use this process to benefit your music career. We also point you to a good guide at the end, which instructs you on how to set up a mailing list, and how to make sure your list is profitable.

So what are the benefits on setting up a music mailing list? Read on to find out.
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How To Sell Music Online – The Ultimate Guide

How To Sell Music Online

If you’ve ever wanted to know how to sell music online, you’re in the right place! Today we’ll be looking at how to take your digital songs, and put them up for sale in multiple places. Once your songs are up, everything runs on autopilot. There’s no need to stand by and manually send every song that’s bought from you, the systems we will show you handle everything on your behalf.

There are two main places you should be selling your music online: On your own website, and on other established digital download shops such as iTunes and Amazon MP3. Today we’ll be looking both at how to sell your music on iTunes (And other popular MP3 stores), and how to sell digital downloads on your own website. First however, let’s have a look at why you may want to sell your music online.
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Music Marketing – How To Promote Your Music Successfully

Music Marketing

Today we’re going to look at an extremely important aspect of your music career: Music Marketing. We’ll looking at some of the best ways to promote your music, as well as some of the platforms that work best in getting your music out there.

This article isn’t a bunch of rehashed information full of strategies that don’t work anymore, everything listed below still works for the modern day independent musician. It’s because of this that I ask you to share this article around if you feel it has been helpful for you. You can either do this by sharing it via the social media buttons at the top of this article, or by linking to it from your website.

But before we go into the best ways to market your music, let’s have a look at why you need to do this.
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Music Business Strategies Interview With Promote Your Music

Hi guys, just a quick update today. Chris Rocket from the Promote Your Music blog recently interviewed me (Shaun) for his website. Some of the things we talked about include:
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How To Be A Wedding Singer

How To Be A Wedding Singer

Today we have a guest post by Sam from Music Live UK on how to be a wedding singer. If you have ever been interested in making some money as a singer at people’s weddings, then you need to read this article!

If you are a talented singer with good on-stage presence, then you could consider a career as a wedding singer. Weddings are big business all over the world. By providing quality entertainment at some of these weddings, you can easily build a career for yourself. Yes, wedding singing is a competitive market. But with a combination of talent and good marketing skills, you can earn yourself a very good living.
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Why You Need To Invest In Your Music Career

Invest in your music career

Today we’re going to look at the need to invest in your music career. Want to make money from your music, but don’t want to invest in making that happen? I’m sorry to break it to you my friend, but it simply doesn’t work like that.

Let’s make one thing clear: If you want to take your music career past the ‘making music in your bedroom’ stage (And start making money), you will need to invest in it. It really is as simple as that. While finding that money to invest isn’t easy for everyone, it will have to happen sooner or later.

Here are some of the costs you may, and probably will, incur:
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Win! A $181 Membership To Our Online Music Business Academy

Win A Music Business Academy Place

Hi guys, just a quick post today. I’ve got a very special prize for you, I’m giving three lucky readers the chance to win a year’s free access to the IMA Music Business Academy!! This is a prize worth $181, and is worth every penny you won’t pay for it!! :D

The academy will give you lots of great advice you won’t find anywhere else, and is tailored to the independent musician. This means all the advice you receive will be practical and achievable, and get your music career moving faster then ever before!

Like the sound of winning this fabulous prize? Then all your have to do is…
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How To Get Signed – The Best Way To Get A Record Deal

How To Get A Record Deal

If you’ve ever wondered how to get signed or how to get a record deal, then this is the guide for you. There is a lot of very valuable information in this article, so if you find it useful, please share it on your favourite social networking website (E.G Facebook, Twitter , Google + etc) or your own site.

The reason this guide came about is because the old method of getting signed to a record label has died out. It used to be enough to simply have a talent and bump into the right person, but not any more. No more will sending your demo to a record label give you the chance of being signed, you now have to do a lot more to get on the radar of a record label a&r.

Despite the old methods not working anymore, when you do a search for how to get signed to a record label, you still see articles giving outdated advice. This article aims to change that.
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A Bit More About Independent Music Advice (IMA)

Sometimes I get emails asking about IMA and the work we do. Because of this, I thought I'd show you a bit more about what we do and why we do it. In short: This site is there to help independent musicians learn the business side of the music industry. Why do we do this? Because a lot of people could be making a lot more then what they currently do, but simply don't have the knowledge to make it happen. That is why we provide this information, to help guide you and make your music journey a much better one.

Why Learn The Music Business?

If you've ever tried to release a song or even give your music away for free, you'll know how hard it is to get people to listen. You need to ask yourself, are you making money from your music? Do you know who your biggest fans are in terms of sales and dedication to your cause? If you have a gig today, do you know which of your fans are most likely to turn up? Furthermore, would you even know how to get people to come down to your gigs?

The music industry is a lot tougher then a lot of people think. It's not as simple as creating a CD, telling people to buy it, and a load of people magically find your website and buy your music. There's a lot more to it then that, and certain things need to be done before people will be interested in buying your songs. In fact, there's a lot more that needs to be done before people are even willing to download your songs for free these days!

The freedom of the internet has meant that everyone has a voice, and the average music fan has got fed up of listening. So what can you do to get fans interested in your music particularly?

This is where independent Music Advice (IMA) come in! By learning the business of music, you will be in a position to properly market yourself in a way that will make people listen. You will learn key business practices to get your music on the map, and start making money from your music career.

We offer a lot of free music business advice on this website, but if you really want to take the music industry by storm and have your career take off, you need to check out the IMA Music Business Academy. This is where we give you a step by step guide on what you need to do to make it as an independent musician. It is possible to make a part time or full time living from your music, and it's possible to do that without the help of a record label or getting signed.

The problem I see a lot however, is musicians promoting in the wrong way. They are convinced that their marketing efforts are moving them forward, when in fact they are simply wasting their time and energy. We aim to put a stop to this, and only focus on what is proven to work in the music industry. While in IMA we cover a load of topics that people have requested from us, in the IMA Music Business Academy, we only cover things that are proven to move your music forward. No time wasting, no fluff: Only the good stuff!

Music Industry Knowledge

Independent Music Advice provide you with all the knowledge you need to tackle the music industry by yourself. The music industry can be a tough one, and one where good knowledge and advice isn't freely available. This is why we decided to set up this site, so you could find everything you need in one place.

Music Industry Jobs

If you want a job in the music industry, you need to be able to have a good working knowledge of how things work. There are a lot of different jobs you can take up in the music business: A musician, a ghost-writer, a wedding singer, a music producer, a blogger, and much more. Each of these jobs has pros and cons, so it's up to you to decide which is right for you. We give a lot of advice on all different types of music business jobs, so have a look around the site for more information.

If you like the information we provide on this website, please share it around via Facebook, Twitter, your own websites, or anywhere else you think other people will find it useful. This is only quick for you to do, but will mean a great deal to us. Thanks again for visiting Independent Music Advice, bookmark us and enjoy your stay.

To see older posts, check out the Independent Music Advice Archive >>

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