Do you still have to get a deal with a major to become famous ?

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Sony, Warner, Universal make you dream, but the big music companies and their steamrollers seem inaccessible to you or even downright frightening.

If you’re a successful artist, if your audience has been following you for a while and the desire to reveal your talent in the open air is growing exponentially, then you’re ready! But how do you make it without having access to the big music industry majors?

Why so much fervour with the big majors?

There are many advantages to signing with a major. Money to get started, access to their distribution networks and a great marketing boost for your brand image. In addition to being difficult to access, a major can suddenly find itself constraining for an artist seeking freedom of expression and creation.

Being able to reveal oneself to the public under the aegis of these sacrosanct industries will systematically require to bend to marketing or musical constraints. Even if you lose your identity, your public and gain the exit door of these companies for which you will not have been profitable enough. Money, always money, such is the unique motivation of these mastodons. And no, the majors don’t so much represent an artistic ideal!

To break into music without majors? Internet, a first step towards your visibility

The advent of the Internet in the 2000s had already literally changed the game. This is even more true today, be visible and prolific on social networks. Expose your music, your talent, your personality. Never forget that Lana Del Rey was revealed thanks to YouTube and this in only a few days!

The web is full of possibilities. If your talent is undeniable, and your audience follows your news on a recurring basis, you can easily stand out from the crowd. As long as you invest yourself one hundred percent. This rather time-consuming activity requires pugnacity and rigour in order to publish quality content and build loyalty with your audience.

Take the Shaka Ponk group, for example. Of course they are well known today, but they never stop communicating and engaging their fans. Aside from any musical appreciation, their visibility on the networks still allows them to federate their audience and to conquer more and more of them. A good example to follow.

Be physically present and reveal yourself to new audiences

From the village festival where you live, to the charity concert of a big city, your active and qualitative presence on the web will take you much further than you think. When the artistic proposal is appealing, the proposals follow naturally from it.

Some events will not enchant you at first glance, but every opportunity is good to take to conquer a new audience and be physically and artistically present. Always take one step at a time and never lose an opportunity to be seen and spotted.

Why not an independent label?

At a time when the music world is in decline, the majors have to change their approach regularly in order to maintain their market share. The pressure is such that more and more independent labels are pulling their pins out of the game. They follow you for your music as it is.

In spite of less means and smaller distribution networks, these labels generally support you in an unfailing way. More and more artists, even world-famous ones, are leaving the ship of the majors for labels more in line with their personality.

Never give up!

Any artist will tell you, work always pays. The road to success is often endless and tedious. But by dint of courage and self-sacrifice you too will find your place in the sun. Maybe that’s when a coveted major will approach you!