I am a solo musical artist and just want to let other musicians know that the odds are stacked against you millions to one that you will make it or be discovered.

So far as I can see, besides you have to have superior music, its not how good you sound, its who you know!!!!! 

Then once you do find somebody that may know someone, then you need big bucks to pay off a lot of people to get radio stations to play your music on the air or have a record company promote your music.

You have to be super lucky or blessed to make it into the music industry.

So if you have very little resources like me, here is some advice to how to get started in the music business that I have done so far, again I am new to the music business and some of these things may work over time, just too soon to tell for me yet.

1. Have your best songs ready to go before you go in to a studio.

2. Do research on recording studios, make sure they have quality recording music and in case you need a studio musician to help finish up your tune that the studio can hook you up with them.

3. Once your songs are finished & you have them on a cd, go home and have them copyrighted asap, these days you can upload your music to the copyright web site, it costs $35

4. Sign up with one of the royalty companies example: BMI, there are others. But what they do is you register your music and if you do make it and your music plays out there, a company like BMI will collect the royalties for you and eventually send you a royalty check, usually they are approx 6 months behind.

5. Next if you just have a few songs, of course send them to all your friends & family by email to give you opinions of your songs, sometimes they may not like it and you will get criticism, just be prepared to take it. Once you get it from them, then you should be prepared to take criticism and rejection from strangers. Hopefully you are fantastic & they love your music !!

6. Promoting your music is a full time job, if you can't afford to pay a company to do it, you have to do it yourself or you just wasted your time and money recording those songs. I have my own business & I still can't afford to pay someone to promote my music, so I have to do it when I am not at work, which includes getting up early before work or staying up late in to the night doing research on where to send my music.

This is what I have done so far that has not cost me any money & I have gotten some results:

A. Build your bands web site, so you can put all your music links that you will get from other sites that you will read about below, your bio, your tour schedule if you are touring, contact info etc..

B. Once you have your music in a mp3 file just google online music stores willing to sell indie music, these days, there are a load of them, they may be small but it is a start, then if someone likes your music you have somewhere to tell them where to download your music. Start with the small online stores first, then go for a CDBaby.com or a TuneCore.com they take indie music, you will have to pay them to sell your music, it is not that much, then they will get your music on sites like iTunes.com, Amazon, Napster, Rhapsody etc.. That takes from a week to a few months, I hear all different storues about how long it takes, right now as of this writting I am still waiting to get on those sites.

C. Email internet radio stations that will play indie music, you will probably either email them your mp3 files, direct them to a link where your music can be heard then they get back to you if they want your mp3 music files to play on their internet radio stations.

What good are internet indie radio stations, I think they are the future of the music industry, by them playing independent artists, they are first of all giving people that are in the music industry like A&R people a chance to listen to you & if they like you they may contact you. This is a great way  for your future fans to hear your music, basically the listener discovers you and they go online to a online music store to buy your music that I mentioned above in "A."

Indie means independent artist, at first I heard that, I am like what is that ???

D. College radio stations, again just google college radio stations taking submissions of indie music, they may want you to email the music or mail them a cd, you have to read their online guidelines, if you email them the songs or send them links and they say, they do not accept it that way and you still do it, you are probably just wasting your time, they will just delete your emails.

E. MySpace.com so far as I can tell I see it works for some people but what l can tell on MySpace.com is millions of musicians all trying to promote their music and they don't care to listen to yours, and do you have time to listen to theirs, probably not you are too busy trying to promote your own music !! I guess their are true fans out there willing to listen to new music, it just takes time.

F.  Facebook.com & Twitter.com can be used also to promote your music, I haven't tried either yet.

G. Their are popular internet radio stations out there like Jango.com you can pay to have your music played. I tried it & a lot of people liked my music, just something about paying someone to play my music just bothers me. But a good way to get exposure if you have money to spend.

H. If you can do open mic nights out, a good way to start your local fan base you never know ?

You may be able to sell some cd's or give them flyers on where they can download your music.

I. Playing clubs is better than open mic night, hopefully you get a nice following.

J. Touring across the country which I hear is great for spreading your music across the country, their are a ton of variables for that and I have never toured so I could not give you all the in's and outs of that.

K. Being on sites like iTunes.com is great, but you have to direct people to your page on their to hear a sample of your music & if they like it they may buy your music. So you have to have a marketing plan layed out follow it and tweek it a long the way, cause something always pops up along the way.

L. Make a video for YouTube.com - I have no experience in making video's, I made a very basic video just to have something, cause people and web sites want to see you & hear your music - but very hard to get a video to go viral, agin you hve to have money to make that happen, or do something so outrageous that thousands of people want to share it with others.

M. Also almost all the sites where you are going to upload your music want a profile picture, make it your best pic. I don't have too many pics of myself and I just used a few that I have laying around, I have to get a nice picture take of me with my guitar.

N. Then after you do most or all these things, the odds are still stacked against you millions to one but maybe over time you may just get lucky or run in to that person that knows somebody in the music business can help you that you may make it. You just may have thousands of fans over time on a number of sites that you can email them news you are coming out with a new song & tell them where to buy it and they may share it with their friends and that's how things go viral.

So you never know till you try !!

I will be adding more things I learn in my journey through the music biz on this page over time.

If you have any comments or any advice to people you want to add, email me here:

Nick Turi