A decade ago when I started writing a series of articles called ‘IndieTips’, I called the first one “Label or Independent?” But in the 21st century, that title is no longer appropriate: every working musician these days has (or should have) a record label. The correct question is: “whose label do you work for?”

If you control the business functions of the record label yourself, then you’re independent. If you want someone else to run the label for you, then you’re looking for a corporate career. Just to humour me, take a moment and drop any negative preconceptions you may have about the whole term “corporate”. Yes, we all think of “The Man” (boo hiss): bankers and pinstripe suits and skyscraper boardrooms… the evil fat-cat record producer smoking a cigar behind his desk. But let’s face it, most modern societies are run with big business in mind: everything around you (with only the occasional exception) is made by a corporation. Seriously — look around you and pick out the hand-crafted items in your home that were made by individual artisans. Most things in our lives are marketed on a massive scale; a corporation will go bankrupt if they aren’t constantly selling millions of units.

Every $2 bottle of drain cleaner has to support factories full of wage-earning workers, offices full of hard-working paperpushers, a ravenous horde of panicky investors who will sell their stock if the company even hints at a weak bottom line. It’s how our society works. Nothing particularly wrong with it, arguably… and if there is, then history will have the last laugh.

But music is no exception. Every $15 CD sold by a major record label has to support the wages of thousands of workers (from the CEO to the janitor), plus the normal costs of having an office building (from toilet paper to electricity bills), plus the specific costs of making more CDs (from graphic design to studio time to manufacturing), plus the absolutely stunning amount of advertising money required to convince a society that Britney Spears is actually worth listening to.

The result, when it all works properly, is millions upon millions of CDs sold. But with all those expenses, is it any wonder that the musician him or herself gets very little cash reward (despite what you see on MTV)? Last month I read a business report that stated that of the hundreds of recording artists on EMI’s roster, 80% of them are not actually profitable. Wow. All those artists and CDs have to be subsidized by the other 20% — add that to the costs of doing business as a major record label.

The upshot of all this is that a corporate career is great if you want fame. If you want the chance at that MTV lifestyle: fans chanting your name in Japan, a staff of people who will make sure you’re happy and healthy even if you don’t take care of yourself, girls (or guys) throwing themselves at you with adoration in their eyes, bragging rights for the rest of your life. But only *if* you happen to get lucky (and it is primarily luck, sadly, more than skill) and become part of the 20%. Eight out of 10 starry-eyed musicians end up saying “where’s the money I thought you promised me? And what do you mean I’m fired?”

If that’s OK with you, then you probably want a corporate career. I’m no expert on that path — but there are good books out there covering how to do it.

If, however, you

1) want to make music and pay your bills with it for the foreseeable future, and

2) you have no problem with working harder than you’ve ever worked before,

then you’re a good candidate for an independent music career.

THINGS TO REMEMBER:- A corporate music career is more about mass marketing than individual skill.

Fame = corporate career.

A living wage = independent career

THINGS YOU NEED TO LEARN ABOUT:

Books and articles about the basic economic realities of modern society (who really runs what; how big corporations stay in business; whose interests are pushed by the media).- Articles on the collapse of the major record labels.

Anecdotes and biographies of artists who’ve had major record label contracts; find ones that aren’t just the huge success stories (though even the most famous have had a surprisingly poor relationship with their labels at times.)