The Pros and Cons to a DIY Approach to Your Music

I’m sure that most of you are familiar with the term DIY, meaning “do it yourself” and how many bands are purely based around “doing it themselves”. Some people would swear their lives to the concept and others, not so much. Here’s a breakdown of some of the things that a DIY approach to music often times involves:

·        Writing your own music

·        Playing your own songs

·        Taking care of your own finances

·        Booking your own gigs

·        Finding your own band members

·        Managing your own band

·        Publicizing your own band

·        Producing your own songs

·        Usually recording your own songs with your own equipment

·        Basically doing everything yourself that a record label would otherwise do

·        Sticking it to the man

Sounds pretty tough, huh?

Well welcome to the world of how many musicians at least get started. It may sound extremely demanding, but it could be completely worth it if you’re willing to put in all of that effort and if you possess that level of organization. The major advantage to the concept of DIY is that you get complete and total control over how your band looks, sounds, and how your audience perceives you, as opposed to how when a band or a label hires a producer, the producer may come in and completely butcher the artist’s “vision” of the song or just make it suck in general. There is an unlimited amount of creative freedom in the DIY method.

If one of your strengths is in finances/investments, then DIY is probably perfect for you. In DIY you get complete authority over anything you invest your money in and you have the liberty of keeping a tight watch on what your money situation looks like. There are a countless number of musicians that have been screwed over by their managers and accountants – take Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails for example. The artist management company that he hired stole or misused $10 million of his money. AND they charged 20% of the profit Mr. Reznor made in turn for their services, which is not an uncommon toll taken from artists’ profits. When you work for yourself and don’t have anyone working for you, you keep ALL profits, but unfortunately not all of us have the marketing or management experience (especially at a young age), which brings us to the cons of the DIY method.

One of the primary cons of using the DIY approach is that not all of us were born with amazing marketing/management skills and a phenomenal instinct with the principles of persuasion.  Especially as musicians, we tent to exercise the right sides of our brain more than the left, leaving us gifted in creativity, but screwed in areas like logic and rationality. The DIY approach may be not such a good idea for many of us simply for that reason because it requires so much organization and planning, all relying on that still developing brain of yours; so as I said, technically you should be able to keep all of the profits, but one or few people in charge of so many things at once, especially if you don’t have the skills, will not even earn you enough profit to compensate for what you could have made with simply hiring somebody.

There is always, of course, the formidable issue that is common among many musicians called money. Money is something that needs to be attained before the approach of the DIY method has begun because so many of the things I mentioned with bullet points above require the equipment and resources to make yourself look and sound professional or simply get your name out into the world. Money is especially critical to the process of publicity because a combination of money and brains are what is going to get your name out into the real world. This is the most important part of the business aspect of music because if people see your talents as well as your name, then it will become easier and easier to draw a crowd (as well as record labels if you’re sick of this whole DIY thing and spending your money).

“How else would someone get started in the music industry?” I hear you cry. That’s the problem, my friends - for the average musician, there aren’t many other options. In reality it’s either you have lots of connections and pre-discovered talent somehow, or that you’re willing to work your butt off and earn sufficient amounts of money to essentially set up your own record label. Of course, if you have these connections and what not, go for it! 'Sell out'! But I think it’s safe to say that most of us have to work our butts off, which is not uncommon at all. Most of the music you hear today comes from hard working people that started off with little or no money, but they knew what they had to do and they did it. I’m not going to go on any longer though, for I will let you to form your own opinions, but I will say this: it’s a perfectly normal and sensible thing to start off your career with a DIY approach and let others then see you and develop your career into a more complex business structure. Money may be an issue for many of us, but as always, a willingness to work hard and put in relentless effort can compensate for this.

Rules and Restrictions May Apply

I'm sure Mommy and Daddy have told you at least once or twice that you can be anything you want when you grow up. Well guess what - they're right! But what they didn't tell you is that rules and restrictions apply towards musicians because there is no such thing as a verbal asterisk at the bottom of the page in tiny print. Us musicians have the tough jobs; we are the face of legitimacy and illuminating force for the people on society, relationships, and just truth in general - we're the real deal, man. No matter what people will tell you about their jobs and how much crazy hard work it is to sit in that cubicle and drink copious amounts of coffee, we are the ones that deserve the pay of a lifetime.

Of course I joke that anyone isn't a musician doesn't have to work hard, but the reality is that they do and that's why our job grows to be harder and harder, for it is our job as artists to entertain these people and constantly attract them to everything about our music and our personalities because that guy that complains about the shape of his cubicle or that he didn't get the memo on the TPS reports is the guy that may end up listening to our music or going to our shows. People are getting harder and harder to entertain, especially with the direction society is taking, because times are getting tougher and stress levels are going up and as a result of this, the entertainer has to step up his game and REALLY take the audience to a place away from their problems, or sometimes just the opposite - a place that we can all relate to.

These are all reasons that the young musician must focus on completely developing him-/herself in all aspects of musicianship (songwriting, performance, instrument chops, business, marketing, etc.) before expecting to make it as a successful and beloved asset of the music industry. I have no doubt that anyone that has an immeasurable passion for music and a desire to be successful will, in fact, be successful as long as there is an immense willingness to work accompanying these traits. As in anything else in life, music requires that you put in the amount of effort that reflects what you want out of it, and chances are that you will get that if you really commit to your effort.

What I'm really trying to say with this entry is that we are the faces of a new generation of music and that we are the ones that must entertain for a world today in which people hold sky-high standards for new heights in creativity and top notch performance. For those of us as young musicians that truly plan on taking up music for a living one day, we are nearly forced to develop and prepare ourselves to be the best we can possibly be and for that matter, make music that's the best that music can be. We are literally the future of music and the standards for this future can only grow from here on out.

So musicians, develop yourselves in every way you can - go to workshops, clinics, take voice lessons, read blogs, start meeting people and most of all just know who you are and who your music comes from because when you play a show, the audience bought those tickets to see you and hear you, your personality, and everything you stand for or love. You are the world that they can escape to, so make it a world that's easily accessible and then, my friends, you will succeed.