Artists need help.
Do It Yourself (DIY) doesn’t actually mean doing everything alone. No one ever suggested taking the music industry on without the help of at least 1 team member.
The majority of artists whom I speak to on a daily basis have additional day jobs. To dump the entire DIY burden on a musician who is already giving 40-50 hours a week to another arena is ludicrous. If you stack the self-promotion essentials (blog outreach, etc.) atop a laundry list of direct-to-fan responsibilities, a promising artist can be quickly pushed to apathy. I get emails all day saying, “I just don’t have any time. Can’t I just make music? That’s all I want to do.”
Sadly, for an independent artist, those days are over. Music without exposure is nonexistent. That being said, artists need at least one person to help them. I don’t care who it is; their mother, father, brother, stereotypical super fan, 5th grade teacher, parole officer, etc. An artist needs to exhaust their personal networks to find someone who is willing to help them succeed. This task is way too daunting otherwise.
Artists: If you have literally no one in your life who can help, check out http://www.entertainmentcareers.net/employers/submit.asp. Create a for-credit internship opportunity for a student. Let them handle a portion of your online media efforts, and take an immense burden off your shoulders (I would NEVER recommend letting anyone post content on your behalf. I am just referring to the less interactive tasks). This will give a student an in-the-trenches perspective on what it’s like to be an artist in today’s DIY landscape. A band is a business. Businesses have interns.
Artists without assistance will continue to struggle, or quit. Those who can hone their efforts properly (with the help of at least 1 other teammate) will be around to tell the next generation of musicians how both versatility and adaptability allowed them to prosper in the most hectic of times.
Christopher Gesualdi is currently the Marketing Director @ Ariel Publicity (http://twitter.com/cyberprmktg)
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