saturation - the dilemna of choice and visiblity (Score 1)

First off, I must say that I'm pretty impressed by the two articles posted thus far on the music industry and its history. I've been doing a lot of research on my own to aid in furthering my music career and in some respects find it somewhat frustrating because of the issue of saturation.

While the independent music market has been revolutionized with technologies that allow the indie to create, publish and promote their music, we've seen such an explosion in the industry that I think it has become increasingly difficult to be heard.

If you take mp3.com, they've got thousands upon thousands of artists in their system; and unless you've got the cash and working extra hard to promote your music, website, etc., you're just a drop in the bucket of hundreds of thousands of independent artists. Not only is that an issue for the independent artists, but also for the end consumer. With so many choices--and many of them poorly produced, recorded, written, etc.--the independent artists out there are generally given (or contributing to) this stereotype of a less-than-professional and poor-quality music category... the indie. (like the kid down the block who just downloaded a hacked version of Acid and Cool Edit Pro, bought a cheap radio shack microphone and is now a self proclaimed artist).

While there are a number of quality independent artists out there (and I've worked with a number of them on various projects), there are infinitely more artists out there who do a half-assed job at presenting their art. Does the technology really revolutionize the industry? Sure it does, for the hard-working and refined artists out there. But I think that it has created this illusion, that just because indie's have the power to create, publish and promote their own material, quality can be overlooked as merely an optional element in their music.

I think the indie artists of today need to ask themselves some pretty tough questions; questions like:

• What makes my music unique enough that there would be a demand for it?
• Am I prepared to invest money into this (and we're not just talking payola here, but advertisements, marketing at music trade shows, etc.)
• Am I willing to hire other people to help produce my material? With our own biased ears, we hear what we want to hear and not necessarily what others hear. Consider getting others involved in the process

And there are dozens of other questions that independent artist really out to ask themselves before pushing their product to the public. But I think the big challenge that technology has created for artists today is the saturation factor, which poses the issues of too many choices available to the consumer and insufficient visibility (when constrained by your budget and the resources available to you).

Good article! Keep up the great work exposing the current music industry for what it is.

Michael
dock72 music group
committed to the development of today's artist