He IS my favorite artist

My favorite artist out there right now is Martin Sexton. He has a cult following of a few hundred thousand in America. He used to be a signed artist on Capitol Records. He was not getting much radio play and found that he was selling most of his albums at his concerts as opposed to in music stores and such. He parted ways with Capitol and started his own label. His thought process was that he sells more records than his label, why cut them in on it? They were not getting him radio play. Why pay them?

I heard an interview with him on NPR about 5 years ago and he said that he was clearing about $500k a year traveling independently and selling his own records. Now the rocker in me says it is way better to sell 2 million records and have sold out concerts to 50,000 fans, but is that more profitable?

Signed artist? Think about this. You give up much of your artistic license. You pay someone else for distribution. You actually give them ownership in your project. If you hit it big you make more than $500k per year. Most people do not hit it big and spend their time being broke. I dare say though that most people reading this blog have not heard Martin Sexton much at all if ever. He does not need to be a commercial or radio success to make a great living. Now with the integration of the internet distribution is even less important than it used to be.

So if you want to be big and important in the music industry go with a label. If you just want to make music for art's sake and make a living you might want to think about staying independent. It is just very hard for labels to be everything to artists. Too many cut backs and such to be as effective as they once were.

Wow, I started this post to tell you about my ALL TIME FAVORITE ARTIST and ended up on a soap box. That was unintentional. Yes, I do play for a signed artist/band and they do treat us exceptionally well. I am just trying to dispel the "pie-in-the-sky" ideas that we all have when we start looking for that deal.

PLEASE check out Martin Sexton!

Peace