Your Lousy Music Career

Joe Taylor made some great comments last week on his Spinme.com blog regarding ongoing media reports about "lousy" CD and concert ticket sales. He pointed out that a major label's definition of "lousy" can be an indie artist's ticket to a thriving career.

How can that be? Because today's audiences are fractured -- something I touched on early this year with my observations on the Grammy Awards (which I recently turned into a podcast).

Then Joe posed this rhetorical question:

Would the world be more vibrant if one out of a hundred professional musicians made $100,000 per year, as opposed to one out of ten thousand musicians making ten million dollars per year?

Of course, his answer was a resounding YES. These days, there are countless opportunities for artists who operate under the radar screen and cater to niche audiences.

Joe also offered up this bit of reality-check wisdom:

The deflation of the mainstream recording industry as we know it opens up tremendous opportunities for working musicians. And I mean "working." You can't sit back and wait to be discovered -- you've got to go build your own audience. If the labels aren't willing to get out of bed to chase niche audiences and "small" markets, all the better for you.

I agree. The opportunities are there. Are you willing to work to uncover them?

-Bob