Getting and signing a record deal is the dream of every amatuer musician and band. It doesn’t matter if you are playing in your garage, have local gigs or just got together with a couple of friends to make a band page on MySpace. Even people that only sing in the shower dream of getting a record deal. record deals are such a desired item that it is the top prize for what is probably the most watched show in the world, American Idol. The American Idol winner gets a lot of screen time, gets to go on tour, but what they are all striving for is to get the recording deal with Simon’s record company.
You need to be talented to get record deal, but what is considered talent is up to the listeners. It’s kind of like “Beauty is in the Eye Of The Beholder”. If you are good enough that people want to pay to listen to your music you have some kind of talent. That is really all the record companies want, to make money. They will sign anyone that can sell enough CD’s to make a profit, even if the songs are just downloaded from iTunes. If you can make them money, the record companies will sign you. There will always be people that don’t like certain kinds of music. I personally don’t like country music, but you can believe that I would have loved to have been the agent that signed the recording contracts for Shania Twain, Garth Brooks, Tim McGraw, Faith Hill and any of the other country music superstars. I don’t like rap music either, but I wish I owned a piece Def Jam Records.
The internet has brought with it lots of ways to get your music out into the world to be heard. One of MySpace’s biggest sections is for music and bands. All the popular bands, and even the unpopular bands, have their own profiles on MySpace. The profile pages contain information about the bands like: upcoming gigs, contact information, song samples for download. The profiles also normally contain video clips of the bands recent live performance or a couple of their music videos. The most important thing your band or personal profile has to contain is a link to your own website.
Having your own website on the internet is probably the most important thing to getting your name and music out into the world for the record company reps to hear. Having your own website gives you much more control over your information than just having a profile page on MySpace. Hopefully your band name will still be available to register. One of the biggest bands of all time, Journey, didn’t register their own name as a website and they have been around since the 70’s. They ended up with JourneyMusic dot com, and you may have to do the same thing.
The days of the recording company’s A&R reps touring the country looking for the next big band are basically over. They still exist, but you need to give them a reason to come see you play. Now they search the internet looking for talent to sign to a recording deal, and that is the reason you need to get your name and music on the internet.
