New York - GRAMMY Professional Development Event - Meet the Future: Cutting Edge Entrepreneurs Shaping Today's Music Biz

May 26, 2010

The panelists jumped right on in to last night’s program, no need to test the waters for these guys. They started off talking about free downloads and how they find that artists are willing to give away their songs for free to help create a buzz. This is true with the Indie scene in particular; bookers, lawyers, managers and the artists agree that the artist flourishes when their music is available to anyone around the world…for free.

All the panelists agreed that indie artists today need to self promote through the internet, noting that iTunes has helped create a new genre of artists, who now have the same power play as the majors.

For artists to get discovered today, they still need to use the old school method of “out and about” – networking, making connections and cultivating relationships -which translates to Google Reader, IM, Twitter, MySpace, etc. Also of note are the blogs and social sites like We Are Hunted, Elbows, Height Machine as blogs coming out of London. Blogspheres are also vital to an artist with regard to their tour dates, record releases, ticket sale links and merch doors pages.

Artists today use these methods of distribution and allow there tracks and sometimes stems for free because basically, anything that will make people hear their music is a good thing - barriers deter attraction.