Evolution and Ethics of The Guide
Back in January 2006...
Or, everything we’ve learned so far: Research, articles, stories, and practical know-how about the music industry written from an independent band’s perspective.
"Don’t reduce music to the size of your ego."
–David Bloom
The reason for this Survival Guide is simple: We want to share what we'd tell ourselves if we were just starting out as an independent band.
We found, when we started out years ago, that there weren’t enough bands that shared what they'd learned. The information that we found useful was scattered in different magazines, books, and all over the Internet. After doing all of that research, and going through the inevitable issues that a band faces, we decided to write about what goes on behind the scenes, and collect it in one place.
Who Is This For?
Although our main audience is other independent bands like ourselves, this Survival Guide is not intended for musicians only. We found as we wrote and shared drafts of this guide to our non-musician friends they, like us, found these topics engaging. For instance, they weren't aware of the truth of how commercial radio actually works (everything on is pay-for-play!) or the time and effort that is required to get your band noticed, not to mention the time and effort to write, rehearse, and record your music. And, of course, many found the full story behind file sharing interesting since that affects everyone who listens to music.
Survival Guide Ethics*
And there's one thing that we'd like to make clear: We are just a band, not a marketer that is hawking some book or product.* None of our paragraphs will trail off after teasing you with some information, telling you to buy some music guide if you "want to hear the rest." We have nothing to sell you but our CDs, and you should only buy them if you like our music.
We're sharing this Survival Guide because its our belief that indie bands need to stick together. There's no reason to repeat our mistakes and there's certainly no reason to waste time and reinvent the wheel. We're happy to share with you what we've learned. We sincerely hope that you get something out of this. If you like it, or want to talk to us, go ahead and join in the discussion. This Survival Guide is a living document.* We will constantly update it as we learn more on our own, or from other bands that wish to share.*
In our blog, we will also bring you backstage for our efforts to make albums, promote ourselves, play live, and get our music out there. We are doing that to let people behind the scenes and give other musicians ideas. But also, we'd love to hear your thoughts and advice about what we're doing.
We hope you find this useful, whether you're an independent band, or just an individual who is interested in what goes on behind the scenes for indie bands. Welcome to The Indie Band Survival Guide!
Download the PDF
Login and Download the Original Indie Band Survival Guide (2006 Edition). Now contains a new forward as of August 2008.
*And, Where We Are Today...
"And there's one thing that we'd like to make clear: We are just a band, not a marketer that is hawking some book or product."
In 2006, we, Randy Chertkow and Jason Feehan, released the above Indie Band Survival Guide for free under Creative Commons to help share all we knew. Since then, the Indie Band Survival Guide has been linked to throughout the blogospere, written about in Billboard Magazine, the Associated Press, Reuters, and various journals and publications.
One thing led to another and the next thing we knew we were offered an opportunity to transform the original Indie Band Survival Guide PDF - something we wrote over the course of 2 years in our spare time - into the comprehensive book for musicians we knew we had in us. We ended up striking a deal with St. Martin's Press/Macmillan to distribute the book throughout North America and Random House to distribute the book to the rest of the world.
So, yes, now there's a book that we're selling (although the original is always going to be free right here at this site). The book is far better, more detailed, and better written than the original. In short, it's the complete manual for the do-it-yourself musician and is very much worth getting.
We're proud to say that both publishers - St. Martin's Press/Macmillan and Random House - were extremely understanding and supportive about how we got here and have been excellent to work with. We made two demands on them before we could agree to sign any book deal:
1. They had to allow us to continue to distribute the original Indie Band Survival Guide PDF for free from our website; and
2. We asked them to make the book as affordable as possible for musicians.
We're happy to say they did both. For example, St. Martin's Press skipped the hard cover edition and went directly to a more affordable paperback. The result is a 336-page book that costs less than a major label CD.
Introducing A New Resource for Musicians
But the book is only half of the story. Rather than make the Indie Band Survival Guide a book of lists and links that would have gone out of date by the time it hit the presses, we decided to put that information where it belongs: here on the web, free, and updated constantly as the music environment changes.
The book explains what to do, how to do it, and why. The website has where to go, and who to talk to. The kind of information that can change at a moment’s notice.
Here at www.IndieBandSurvivalGuide.com you will not only find all of the links, resources, tools, and services that we list in the book, you’ll find everything that we uncovered while doing our research. In fact, there are thousands of links to explore—but organized for musicians to make it easy to find what you’re looking for. And since any musician can add to it, it’s growing every day.
Better still, it’s free and open to the entire indie community. Think Wikipedia edited by musicians, with ratings and comments just like Amazon. Add to that an automated link checker to make sure you don’t waste time on resources that have disappeared.
Here’s a sample of what you will find here:
So join us as we build this free and open resource for all musicians to share and collect their knowledge that grows and changes as this new music environment does. We can’t do it alone. As we said in 2006:
"We found, when we started out years ago, that there weren’t enough bands that shared what they'd learned. The information that we found useful was scattered in different magazines, books, and all over the Internet. After doing all of that research, and going through the inevitable issues that a band faces, we decided to write about what goes on behind the scenes, and collect it in one place."
That place is right here at www.IndieBandSurvivalGuide.com. Welcome to The Indie Band Survival Guide!