Forever Indie

I was speaking with an industry expert who runs a very successful company that supports global musicians on tour recently. He told me about an "up and coming" act that had just sold out a 4,000 capacity venue.... He said big acts would generally move from Theaters to Stadiums, minimum capacity would be just under 40,000, indicating that 4,000 capacity was relatively small...... That made me think; most musicians I know would be thrilled and possibly consider themselves somewhat successful if they sold out a 4,000 capacity. 'I on a personal note think that is a good attitude', however, I asked the question; why though, can major labels sell out huge venues, in this case for a band that I wouldn't want to name but If I did, you would possibly not have heard of them, but if the band was independent, they'd most of the time struggle to sell out?

Answer is simple, labels have access to chunks of money! Money opens up the doors to partnerships with the likes of promoters in hope that they'll return their investment.

Three observations:

1) If Indie music communities of musicians came together, they could do more.... Possibly even more than the labels....

2) The Live music Industry is not that difficult to crack, we just need to look beneath the surface

3) Unless the reason behind our music success goes beyond "Me being famous", Indie or unsigned acts will for sure remain unknown.

All there observations can be expanded on but I'll leave that for another time.

We at I&U in an attempt to help crack the industry have started our Artist celebration initiative, sharing industry knowledge for the benefit of all.... We don't make any money from these as they are free to attend and cost us quite a bit to organize... Why do we do this? Because we believe we can crack the industry, creating another path outside of Major label partnerships. This doesn't mean we have anything against major labels, but would want to go into a label partnership on our terms!

This year we have Jake Isaac who has toured with Elton John, also has been listed as one to watch by BBC sound with us. He'll be sharing some Industry insight. Let us know you'd like to join us by joining the wait list using this form