Circumnavigating Financial Barriers to Making Art
Circumnavigating Artistic Financial Barriers
Let me blunt: being an artistic is an expensive affair. Yes, there are a lot of ways to financially compensated including through streaming monies, merchandise sales, ticketed shows, and corporate sponsorships. Indeed there is a bounty that awaits those who make great music. Still, the upfront cost to getting a career started can seem overwhelming. So, what’re some ways that you as an independent artist can avoid investing heavily on the front end? Let’s discuss.
Music Production. If your greatest barrier as an artist is paying for music production, then you have several options ahead of you. The most rewarding road will be to learn how to produce yourself on any of the accessible Digital Audio Workshops available to you. This will help you develop a coherent artistic sound and give you a broader set of skills than your peers. If becoming a producer isn’t available to you, try to find a producer who will negotiate budget with you. Often times, producers will reduce their upfront fee for a portion of the master. Master splits are a great way to prioritize output while minimizing cost. If you’re not in a music city or don’t have access to producer connections, you can always find beats on websites like BeatStars. Little Nas X wrote “Old Town Road” over a BeatStar track and look how that turned out for him!
Video/Photo. Its important for a lot of musical artists to hire visuals creatives to flesh out their aesthetic world. The costs of photoshoots and video shoots add up though; how could it not when you factor in the labor of photographers, stylists, make-up artists, editors, colorists, and other visually creative professionals? Artists like Magdalena Bay have long used DIY green screen and self-edited their videos in order to create a coherent visual world and output great content. If you’re a little less visually inclined, a smart phone can take you very far. Using your smartphone or one of your friend’s smartphone, you can shoot, edit, and upload great DIY album covers or simple videos. Early on, this is an cost-effective to pave a path forward.
The grand takeaway here is that when you don’t have access to finance your art you need to take a DIY approach. Cutting deals with producers, using online beats, making videos on your phone are all acceptable ways to get your art out there. Don’t let the financial barriers stop you from releasing your music.