I agree with Beattie - to a point.

Don't spend too much time worrying about being 'signed'. So many bands concentrate on trying to get the attention of A & R people (who often behave like a group of sheep - not daring to break away from the flock) instead of working on building up their own popularity and support amongst the public. Why not do it direct?

And on the gigging bit I would say that gigging 4 times a week is probably too often (unless you are touring). You'll exhaust your supply of friends & family to take to the gigs, and probably end up hating being in a band ...

Keep doing what you are doing, grow your audience, develop your songs and your performance and if you're good enough success will surely follow (and the record companies will come to to you - if that's what you want!)


Stretch
www.Dastards.com
www.MySpace.com/theDastards

Well said Stretch. To back up my point regarding touring 3 or 4 times a week i was referring to gigging around the UK. There would be no point in doing 3 or 4 gigs in the same town as that would be pointless from a fan point of view.

I completley agree about the A&R sheep thing.lol - it can be funny to see at times. Looking fwd to seeing which pen the sheep will run into regarding new music in 2006

without a label who can afford a tv ad, who can pay a company to plug your tracks to the labels, organise massive street-team materials etc..

Im all for bands staying independent but its more than difficult when it comes to funding if you want to play along with the big boys of the industry. If you're content with doing the pub circuit for life then im sure you'll be fine with it.

cover bands really rake it in!

if your band/artiste/writer/singer isn't THAT good, you do need the major label budget to get attention (though the punters will still never buy the product in any bulk, which is why all the majors' figures are in red).
But a REAL talent (1%) is better off getting noticed through the music which, if it's great, will emerge no matter what.

Nobody said it was easy!

And very few labels will buy TV airtime to promote an artist ...

My point is that many bands perceive success as getting 'signed', and concentrate all their efforts on achieving this instead of putting all their effort into promoting themselves to the consumer. If (and usually When) they don't get signed, they run out of energy and eventually give up (or start playing covers - or worse still, start a 'tribute band' ugh!)

It's a marketing exercise - and in my view should be addressed to the right market.


Stretch
www.dastards.com

We shut down our tribute band agency (thank gawd!), as amazingly the profits turned out to be in the minus.
I don`t see a problem with bands playing a decent cover show, to gel themselves though, a certain ex Take That member, must be one of the greatest cover merchants on earth.
I do however feel, that live music wise, it`s all very busy at the moment,as there is a lot of talent, but very little money to pay for it.
The bands have to support themselves.
Is it worse to wear an embarrasing supermarket uniform, or be in a ghastly trib band?
I have never worked the answer out to that one, but have discussed it lots.

It's a real quandry...

I think we've got the good songs/voice/musicians, and we've also got the money (between us) to make a good job of recording our material. The first time around, we had free studio time meaning that the engineer and manufacturing didn't bankrupt us all. This time around, we're recording ourselves having spent quite a bit on the relevant kit (laptop, logic, MOTU, etc etc). The mic's we borrow for free from our guitarists mastering firm. All that's left is guest musos (Dan Cassidy on violin - yay!) and manufacturing.

But the rub is that having the money to splash on engineers or decent equipment implies that we have good careers - and we all do. And we're geographically split between London and Cambridge. No-one can move without jeapordising their career and risking losing the ability to fund what we do now. But we can't gig 'till we drop unless half of us move. Bit of a vicious circle that...

So in our case, getting some help in terms of promotion or radio play would be the sort of leg up that helps us reach a larger audience, shift a few more CDs, get some higher profile bookings, etc. And certainly when it comes to radio play, when I last tarted us around, not being signed was a barrier even to local commercial radio.

Mind you, the love of the music is still a big part of why we do this, so it's not like we're beating ourselves up over it.

Anyhoo, just my 5p worth...

--Chris (www.myspace.com/stryngs - yes, we caved in and stuck a profile and some songs up... only about a year behind the myspace curve...)