This was a great talk with singer-songwriter Luke Sital-Singh. I love the point that Cath of Direct Input makes (among several points, really), of how there’s “not just one route through the music industry.”
She talks about bands getting signed from blog posts back in the day – oh, the glorious music blog days!
There was a time when bands got signed off the buzz created from a few bits of coverage on a few websites. Hell, there was a time when Pitchfork review helped you sell thousands of albums in a week.
So bands would get signed, and they wouldn’t have played more than a handful of shows. Or toured!
Meanwhile, bands that band played hundreds of shows a year, toured thousands of miles, all around the world – those were the acts without the buzz, but they were putting in the work regardless.
All that said – don’t be so in a rush to get noticed that you forget to handle the basics.
Know how to play to an empty room. Know how to mess up the release of an EP. Book time at a studio and have a miserable experience. Spell things wrong on your new merch line.
Make all the mistakes now, when no one is looking.