Speaking of that, how do you structure and schedule your career as an independent artist? The music business, to begin with, is an industry wherein there’s not a lot of roadmaps. I would imagine you really have to have a lot of discipline to figure out how to coordinate everything. Can you shed any insight on how you do that?
Well, first of all, you have to be dedicated. You have to love what you’re doing, because you need to dedicate a lot of time to it. And that’s mainly what my brother and I and the rest of the team do. There’s a whole lot of things that you need to take care of, from the admin side of stuff to the legal stuff, and then the copyright stuff. We did a lot of research. These days, with the way the industry’s gone, it’s slightly easier to be independent. The difficult part is giving your time to it. The Internet makes it easier for us to promote the music and get it out to channels where people can buy it, listen to it, and enjoy it. But some of the harder parts are doing gigs, shows, or even some of the media stuff. It’s not as simple as just getting stuff done online.
Is it harder to get gigs because there are not as many venues?
The shortage of venues is one thing. But also, when you’re online, sometimes it’s not quite straightforward for people to be able get in touch with you and book you for a gig, or TV and radio interviews. When you’re online, you can probably get interviews online or blog sites. But trying to get in touch with mainstream radio and TV, is a whole different ballgame. Sometimes, there’s an unwritten or unspoken code. There’s a bit of a monopoly going on. If you’re not signed to a major label, then—even though you might have a hit song, or a hit album—people sometimes don’t want to pay attention. But there’s always ways around that, as long as you can reach the fans and give them interviews such as these on the Internet. I guess it balances itself out.
So when it comes to artist promotion, the Internet really is a totally separate world from TV and radio.
Definitely. It’s one thing being an Internet phenomenon. It’s another thing being a major radio or TV success, whereby you are all over the airwaves. And then there’s another thing: being both. Having the best of both worlds. A good example is Justin Bieber. He was a phenomenon on the Internet; but then Usher’s label picked him up, and now he has the best of both worlds.
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