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

How To Produce Music For Beginners Part One

How To Produce Music At Home For Beginners Part One

If you’ve ever wondered how to produce music, you’ve come to the right place. In this two part guide, we look out how to produce music for beginners, and how to do so with minimum funds available to you. Despite popular belief, you don’t need to spend hundreds of dollars on software to become a good music producer. What you do need however, is practice and a good ear for sounds.

I’ve seen people spend hundreds on music production software and struggle to use it properly. I’ve also seen people spend $30 on simple beat maker software such as DubTurbo, and make good quality beats in a matter of hours. Being a producer is more then just what software you use; it’s how you use it, and how much time and effort you’re willing to put into mastering your craft.

If you want to learn how to produce music, I suggest you read this article from start to finish. As long as you apply what you learn and work on becoming a music producer, there’s no reason you won’t have your first songs complete sooner rather then later.
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DUBturbo Review – Beat Maker Software

DUBturbo Review - Make Your Own Beats With Cheap Beat Maker Software

This is a DUBturbo review.

Today we’re going to look at DUBturbo, and why it’s considered one of the best music beat makers on the market for intermediate and beginner producers. Dub Turbo is a relatively new piece of music production software, but in a very short amount of time it has gained a large amount of market share. It has been able to do this for one simple reason: It is a lot more powerful, and a lot cheaper, then any of it’s nearest competitors.

In this review we give an honest look at Dubturbo, and help you decide if it’s the beat making software for you. If you decide it is, make sure you get DubTurbo through our link to be able to claim our exclusive DubTurbo Bonus.
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What It Really Takes To Succeed In The Music Business

How To Succeed In The Music Business

This article aims to inform musicians how to succeed in the music business. A lot of bad and outdated advice is shared on the web, much of which leads to musicians wasting valuable time, money and effort. Many people have fallen into the trap of following bad advice, only to reflect a number of months down the line and realise their music career hasn’t progressed very much at all. Due of this, it’s become a widely accepted theory that you can’t make money from your music. This however couldn’t be further from the truth, as we hope to show you today.

Today we aim to debunk this myth, and show you what is really needed to get where you want in the music industry. If you aren’t willing to adjust your thinking and invest both time and money in your independent music career, I suggest you stop reading now. If you’re ready to turn your music into a business however, read on, and make sure you don’t miss a single word.
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How To Become Famous

How To Become Famous And Successful

I recently finished reading Total Fame by Max Milias, a book teaching people how to become famous. Inspired by what it had to teach, I thought I’d look at a few of the things he talks about, and get you thinking about what it takes to get famous. Is becoming famous for you? How easy is it to get fame? And how do you achieve fame? All these questions should be answered by the time you finish reading this article, so make sure you read it to the end.
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How To Promote Your Music With Twitter, The Ultimate Guide Part 2

How to promote your music with Twitter, a guide to promoting your music using Twitter

Welcome to part two of our two part series on how to promote your music with Twitter. If you haven’t already, we recommend you read the first part so you’re all clued up on the early stages of the process (How to set up an attractive Twitter page, how to find and get targeted music fans to follow you, and how to automate your Twitter promotion using Tweet Adder):

How To Promote Your Music With Twitter, The Ultimate Guide Part 1 (Opens in a new window)

In part two we look at the process of unfollowing non responsive people and why this is important, the art of messaging your Twitter followers without having you messages overlooked (Most Twitter messages are spam, don’t make yours appear as the same), and finally we look at a proven strategy to making money from Twitter and your music. So grab a coffee and get ready to learn, as you’re about to discover the secret to dominating Twitter!
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How To Promote Your Music With Twitter, The Ultimate Guide Part 1

How To Promote Your Music With Twitter Part 1

Today I’m going to show you how to promote your music with Twitter. From my tests, Twitter seems to be the quickest and easiest social media platform to get fans to your music. While many independent musicians have struggled to use Facebook effectively, Twitter can be the easy but just as effective alternative that you’ve been waiting for.

Over this two part series on promoting your music with Twitter, we will be looking at where to find targeted Twitter followers, how to get these followers to do what you want (E.g. Check out your music / join your mailing list etc) and most importantly how to automate this whole process using Tweet Adder. We will also be looking at a whole load of other details in between, so make sure you read this article in full to become a Twitter expert!
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How To Get Your Music On Itunes, Amazon MP3, Napster, Spotify, and More

How to get your music on Itunes, Spotify, Amazon MP3, Napster, and more digital download shops

Today we’re going to look at how to get your music on Itunes, the Amazon MP3 store, Spotify, Napster, and many other big online music shops using Songcast (Free to sign up to). This guide is a long-time over due, as getting your music out there to the masses should be an essential part of your music strategy. If you make it hard for people to find and buy your music, you will lose out on sales.

In this article we will look at why you should get your music in the biggest online music stores, and how you can easily go about doing this (We provide you with the best way to distribute music). We also touch on a few other related topics, so if you want to get on Itunes have a read to find out all the info.
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How To REALLY Make Money From Your Music, Short Medium And Long Term Strategies

make money from music

Pre note: In this article we look at three main strategies to make money from your music career: How to make money from giving out free downloads (Short term), how to make money from gigging (Medium term) and how to make money from royalty collections (Long term). This is a potentially life changing post. It should change the way you think about your music career, and give you the steps to turn it from a hobby into something that actually makes you money. Please make sure you read it from start to finish then put into action what you’ve learned. You may want to bookmark it for easy reference in the future, and share it with fellow independent musicians. But anyhow, let’s get started…
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Tweet Adder Review

A Tweet Adder review.
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How to Create CDs to Sell to Your Fans, A Quick Overview

This is a guest post by Larry Mitchell. If you want to write for Independent Music Advice, you can find out how here (Link opens in new window).

How to create CDs to sell to fans

You’re an up-and-coming band playing in your local area. You’ve been working hard, and you now have a growing base of fans coming out to your shows. Then the inevitable question comes: “When are you going to make a CD?”

It’s a very good sign when fans start wanting to take your music home with them, but it can also be scary to take the next step and actually produce a CD. It will take some work, but it doesn’t have to be intimidating, or excessively expensive. If you have a good repertoire of songs from which to choose already, part of the job is already done for you. To help you through the process, here are the basic steps you’ll need to take…
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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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