Quote:
Originally Posted by aligak  Here is a reply I received from an AR guy when I posted a somewhat similar thread on another site:
It gets slightly harder to promote(ie sell)an artists work if they have 12 free net albums. As far as self promotion, yeah you gotta do it, but I suggest looking at it as 'brand promotion'. Your name and sound are only part of your brand. The rest is us to the people to decide. Therefore your online presence will influence this -for better or worse.
I honestly can't tell what the huge self promoters want. There's this one guy. He's really good. He has several releases on various net labels and he's everywhere online all the time. So I hope that was his goal because there is no point in signing him. Even though he's extremely good, there's little a label could do for him as far as promotion… On the other hand Frank Reggio put out two really great releases on a net label and got signed to Impulsive Art, although Frank has always promoted himself as a professional producer rather than Internet superstar.
….I know a guy on a good net label who releases his music for free and gets tons of downloads and invites to huge important gigs. He has no interest in selling music even though he obviously could. Wisp got signed to Planet Mu I think. Or was it Rephlex? ….Anyway anything can happen.
I put this up because many of you suggest being on Myspace (which I am but with very few friends), last.fm (which I'm also on), and many others. But as this guy states, it seems to also ruin your chances of getting signed if you already have a big online presence. |
I dont think he is saying a big online presence is bad, I think most quality labels will not look at a big online presence as a negative, they most likely will see it as a positive. Unless they are grooming you as some unheard of talent, and want to find someone undiscovered and "develop" them, which is rare and does not happen much in EDM. I think what he is saying is 12 albums of music waters down the significance of you releasing music on a quality label, because you already have a ton of free music out there for people to pick up. So it lessens the value of a release by a good label if they have to compete with a ton of free netlabel music you have out there, especially when you're talking about 12 albums!
As a future label owner, I would not sign an artist's music who has a ton of exposure through giving away music. If they gave away a few tracks via mostly remixes that they could not get clearance or release, and it helped build exposure then i'd still be interested in them. It also comes down to discography. When you release music you are either building up a good discography or you're building up baggage, filler template abusing discography. So it is important you are dealing with the right labels, and the music are making is of good quality. There is no point to dropping filler tracks out there, just to say you released something to some friends. Sure if you're a player and you're goal is getting pussy, then go ahead. But if you want to build a career for yourself you have to reserve yourself from just dumping out music. The only way to get away with putting out a lot of music is if you're music is versatile and there are differences between the tracks, yet still maintaining a decent quality. You would be quickly expanding to different audiences and DJs this way.