im in the same boat as you anon. i sent my album to my favorite smaller labels. no responses. no idea what i should do next. i think most people get opportunities from playing shows and getting involved in their city's scene. i wish recordings were enough or my recordings were good enough. rip

>>60742565

could i hear a couple of your demos?

>>60742565
can I hear your demo?

>>60742598
i'll listen to yours if you want
mega.nz#!GV02EaYQ!FZFLpV8DlnjwfzEnj7hcdZ5fcSkOGFUIVej6FM986-g

>>60742232
im also in the same boat
i have a ton of rough songs and ideas and demos that im sitting on but im always afraid theyre too rough and even my finished stuff isn't good enough
i have a self released ep on bandcamp and 3 experimental albums on bandcamp with little to no support
ive never submitted to a label though; i'm afraid of what happens if i get rejected, or quite possibly what happens if i get accepted

>>60742565
the biggest issue i find is that it's hard to play intricate music you write alone for many instruments by yourself live without using multitudes of backing tracks (which i dont like the idea of)
there's no scene at all where i live, and the closest scene to me is nyc. i'm literally between having no community at all and a community so large that it's impossible to stand out or gain recognition

>>60742788

here ya go
https://soundcloud.com/ian-mugerwa/sets/ottonotto-demo

listen to tracks 1, 3, 6, and 2 in that order if you want an abridged version

>>60743060

yeah i totally agree with the live playing. it seems that, at least starting out in a scene, you have to be in a band or collective to get your live act established. It's extremely hard for me, as a solo artist, to make a live set im proud of at this point in time despite being able to book house shows. Idk. I guess networking and meeting musicians just has to be an extremely solid goal at this point in one's career.

>>60742788

did you submit it as a download link? because that might've been a big turn off for some labels.

I really like the aesthetic. closest thing i can liken it to is animal collective, but its glitchier and funkier.

I'm on the baby monitor track, and im really enjoying it. what did you use to make this?

As a musician in a recognized band, I will tell you that none of our "breaks" came from sending demos.

We started not caring about labels. Some of our favorite acts didn't give a shit about getting signed. Think of all the amazing, brilliant acts that put out their own music.

We started to get recognition when we stopped thinking that we were only validated through others' opinions. You can't just start with a huge major label. If you are really into getting signed, try sending stuff to tiny unheard of labels first and move up.

We started to get noticed through bands we played with, bands we did splits with, etc. Started getting emails through bandcamp and shit about putting out small runs of EPs and shit.

Music, like every other field, is a field in which you gotta pay your dues.

>>60742232
labels come to you
i had a dj ho liked my songs and played a lot of my beats in his weekly mixes
he approached me about doing a vinyl release with him

you gotta just work your ass off, make regular posts of your material, keep the better stuff up and take down the shit stuff. send tracks to djs.

or start your own label

>>60743060
Yeah friend, I live in NYC and let me tell you, it's pretty fucking hard to start out here. All the entry level venues keep getting shut down and the ones that are left are over saturated so it's tough to book shows

>>60743558

yeah I'd never want to sign with a big major anyway. That's just not the type of exposure I'd like. The biggest I'd ever let it go would be something like Brainfeeder, which, to be fair, is quite big.

And it's not so much that I care about validation, I just want the resources that labels give me to be at my disposal. A wider audience and a studio are what I'd like.

Which city are you from, if you dont mind me asking?

>>60743713
Richmond, VA

>>60743885
oh wow. me too. if you guys play house shows, or even at strange matter / the camel I've probably seen you.

hmmmm. u wanna link up? now i'm very curious.

>>60743713
Also, when I said the thing about validation, it was in no way meant to insult you. it was a poor way for me to say, "if you like your stuff, then it is good" I meant more like don't worry too much about what others think of your music.

If you work hard to create a finished project that you find good, then chances are thousands of others probably will too. a label, like all institutions, are the elongated shadows of individual people. so if a label doesn't like your stuff, it's a handful of people deciding it won't make them money, not everyone saying you suck.

>>60743654
Also, the starting your own label thing is great advice. this does't necessarily mean start a huge vinyl label with 45 artists of the roster. Putting out your music. along with maybe a few other acts, whether they are splits with your band or not. Trades between underground labels is the last trace of old-school music networking but it works. When my band put together a small label, we went from having records for sale on bandcamp to having a label distro with tons of other bands, and having our stuff available in USA, JP, Europe, etc. And we never really spent hardly anything.

>>60743944
you probably have if you are into punk/metal.

>>60744047
when i type quickly, my spelling goes out the window. MY B Y'ALLLL

>>60744047
lolol no problem man i got what you meant. I appreciate the sensitivity, though, it's sometimes hard to come by in a forum like this. thanks for the advice.

>>60744065

ah. thats the problem with the richmond scene i suppose. it's disjointed, and heavily focused on punk/metal/hardcore. I love those genres, but it seems hard for R&B and hip hop artists to get the same type of opportunity. At least that's what I've gathered from my few month stay here.

>>60743713
>I just want the resources that labels give me to be at my disposal
>A wider audience and a studio are what I'd like

It's not the 80s anymore m8. There's a thing called the internet, and recording is cheap as fuck these days.

Smaller labels exist primarily for help with touring and merch.

>>60742788

wedding dress rehearsal is also pretty dope

>>60744047
once our stuff got out there internet-wise, and blogs, etc started talking about us, we started getting emails from labels.

Honestly, I know a few guys, I'd say three or four, who operate pretty legit labels (not like Def Jam or anything, but still pretty damn big for one-person operations) and they love to get demos in hard copies. They have told me that when you send an email, it is just going to get lost. Not just lost within other demo submissions, but submissions, personal mail, mail between them and pressing plants/printing companies, constant notifications from music sites, etc. So if you are going to go that demo submission route, you should probably do it in a tangible fashion, and make it memorable. Make them intrigued to be the dude who found you.

sorry for any typos or bad grammar.

>>60742788
this is really fucking good anon, how long you been making music?

>>60744208
yeah im beginning to think the physical approach is the only approach

>>60744216

2-3 years now.

thanks for the encouragement.

my frustration is that people like you see it and like my stuff and all say great things, but it just doesn't seem like many people see it.

I'm pretty confident that if i was able to get the type of exposure a label would give me, my shit would blow up. At least that's my reasoning.

>>60744177
see >>60744345 (me)

>>60744216
released my band's first ep like 6 years ago. released things with bands for a while. spent the last 4 years making this thing. just finished about a week ago. have no idea what to do with my life anymore.

thanks guys. i sincerely hope you sort out things over there in richmond. i cant get with the punk kids in my city either. for whatever reason those genres create these super devoted scenes though.

>>60744470

woops thought he was replying to me lol