# What is the best way to start music business?



## VengeanceZ (Sep 7, 2009)

I like creating Techno in FL Studio 8 but apparently I don't know any music theory except chords and a few other minors things, this makes my songs a bit unprofessional.

Lots of people tell me my music doesn't vary enough, thus it gets boring quickly. Is this the same for you furaffinity?

I want to start selling a few albums. I already got my first techno album up but no one bought it, I don't blame them. It's not that good but not that bad, I worked hard on them and the overall album running time is 22 minutes. Not much but time well spent.

I started composing some classical pieces now and I might start some music theory. I know a forum where a user explains everything there is to it. This will certainly improve my chords and other stuff and melodies. I kind of suck at them so far.

*My recent classical pieces are:*

http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/270371

In progress:
*
Living Forest:*
http://www.truploader.com/view/673101

This is not mastered at all. When the main part begins, I haven't done that fully. Will probably add some other strings and maybe some tambourines to make it lively but still keep that magical, mysterious, living feeling to the song. That's what I want to achieve.

*My first album is here:*

http://worldofharderstyles.bandcamp.com/

I'm not advertising this, I just want to hear your opinion on the song. If it's worth keeping it on sale or just remove the album and keep it free on here and newgrounds and make songs until they are actually worth selling. But I think they are alright, but that's my opinion on MY OWN songs. Obviously I should like them because I made them.


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## protocollie (Sep 8, 2009)

i'm gonna come out and be blunt and say i'm sorry, if your goal is to make money doing it, there's a higher rate of probability of ending up in the shitter. Just make music for the sake of making music. Improve upon it, find other musicians that you like and contact them. A lot are really friendly. Talk to them, share your work with them, and if you actually have what it takes, I guarantee you'll manage to at least get out a couple releases that sell decently okay. You have to be passionate about the music you produce (especially if you're shooting for a defined genre, as you clearly are) and understand the sound and what's current and exciting, and then innovate on it and put your own spin in.

I'd also say a little more understanding of your genre and the culture you're pushing your music towards would be beneficial. Again, being blunt, everything I've gathered gives me the feeling you don't really understand club/rave culture as well as you probably should to be trying to break into it. Get to know people, understand where the music is today, and go with that. I'm not super familiar with hardstyle but your stuff sounds like a lot of the gabber that was being released in 2002-2003 and so it may be losing favour simply because the sound is out of style.

If you're seeking to improve your music to fall in line with what other people get pushed out, you're not doing it right. Sometimes this works, but generally you wind up with repetitive, boring, bland crap that puts people to sleep because you're doing shit that's too technical and not enough feeling. This is a really common trap in electronic because of the disconnect between 'playing the music' and the work done in the sequencer after the fact, plus the general overall lean towards precision over loose groove.

As for why your hardstyle album didn't sell, the short and dirty version of it is that hardstyle's not really a popular genre and like any of the hard* genres in dance there's really next to no money in it. Not saying this to be mean, it's just like even breaks, which has a fairly large amount of tracks that break through into mainstream (or electro house and straight up house, which are the big miami genres that define the public perception of dance music) have very little money in the business of releasing singles/unmixed LPs. It's a passion thing, that's why people do it. If you want to sell a couple, maybe, you'd best hand that shit to reputable hardstyle DJs (if they even exist anymore) and get support at which point a few hardcore fans might buy it or you get really lucky and get thrown onto a CD comp and pull royalties from that. One other thought is if that anyone was going to buy it, it'd most likely be hardstyle DJs looking for new shit to drop in their sets, and your entire album is not even close to DJ friendly.

I know I've contradicted myself a lot so let me try and summarize my TL;DR wordy points into concise suggestions:

- Make music because you fucking love it. There is no real money in producing dance music unless you are in a very high tier (Tiesto, Gabriel and Dresden,) which you will never get to playing anything interesting or unique. Don't plan on getting paid.
- Talk to other producers and learn from them. Even if you don't do it professionally, start spinning the music that you like at home and -keep on top of it-. Dance music is as much about personal artistry and passion as it is keeping up with the flow of sound, because your ultimate goal is to get DJ support. You need to fit in with what DJs are playing at the time, but stand out with your own flair. Listen to a house mix from 1999, and listen to a house mix from 2009. You can hear there's very different trends of sounds, but each artist also has their own distinct bits that distinguish them.
- Forget selling music. Hand it to DJs. Find the major DJs on your scene, find the lower rung DJs, find the local DJs. DJ support is essential, because that's where most club kids find their dance music. If you have DJ support, your music will market itself.

K. Done.


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## Kiffa_kitmouse (Sep 10, 2009)

protocollie said:


> i'm gonna come out and be blunt and say i'm sorry, if your goal is to make money doing it, there's a higher rate of probability of ending up in the shitter.



Blunt indeed lol... but yeah, unfortunately it seems like the best way to make money off a music business would be to wait until scientists build the time machine, and then use it to travel back to the time when people actually _paid_ for music...


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## Neighboursfiends (Nov 2, 2009)

remember all that is music is good and can reach people so you feel it conveys That's the beauty of music


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## Plantar (Nov 2, 2009)

Everything protocollie said, and more.

Before you try to sell anything, I suggest learning the theory behind music. What stands out is usually the more unique stuff that mixes everything up.

Your stuff was okay, but it was sorta bland and repetitive.


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## jinxtigr (Nov 3, 2009)

I'm going to come from a more rock/mainstream perspective to say that you mustn't think this is uniquely unfair. Everybody else is in the same boat. I probably am a little closer than some to the matter, because I make my living writing software for musicians and sound engineers (another 'genre' where almost nobody can make money, much less a living, and people will tell you to just do it for free!) and it's introduced me to quite a few serious industry people.

I never tried to show them my music- because it wasn't good enough, and wasn't really in their genre. Usually I could get a sense of the level these guys were working on from hearing what they were working on...

I'm getting a little more into the zone in sort of a psychedelic genre- and it's because I'm willing to try to groove instead of just sequencing everything, have learned some arrangement tricks from places like Motown, and the one thing I'm really good at is tone poetry and getting sounds that are evocative. In psychedelia, some playing sloppiness and guitar wankery can be forgiven if it takes you on a trip, so I'm pursuing that for now, see where it goes.

I'm going to ask this: do you like dancing? I can't tell if you like dancing from listening to your dance music, and that's a lot more alarming than if it's repetitive. I can tell you love certain sounds, and that's cool. But it's like the classical bit that goes into very clashing notes in the bass register- did you go for that because you wanted the music to feel sick, or just because you were reaching for something that wasn't a chord tone?

I did this one a long time ago and it uses some of the same 'sick notes'-
http://www.jinxtigr.com/postcardsfromtehigue/DepartedCheese.mp3 but even though it's got just as sour notes, it does NOT just drop them randomly- some bits are totally disoriented, some riffs seem to establish a tonal center which then shifts WITH the entry of a new riff. It's not entirely music theory, either- I was like 16, and baked (got THAT out of my system all at once, as you can probably tell  )

The point is that in doing music (much less doing music for money) we are going after SPECIFIC things. If it's dance music, you have to know what physically entices you to move- in your first dance track there, I thought the rhythm was broken until I figured out there was a little syncopation in it, a stagger. It wasn't there for any dancy reason- the overall beat wasn't being stated and then subverted by that lil' kick- it was just there as if to be different. As soon as things start varying it goes away. Why START with the deconstruction of the beat? Why have the little syncopation in there and not make it sharper and more striking, perhaps with a clave sound on the one and then the hesitated kick?

The place you START from is, nobody gives a rat's ass. Hell, among furries some of us might really like rat's ass, maybe that's too high a bar to set 

It's not going to be enough to just throw variations thinking that it's like being a bricklayer and if you drudge along using the bricks you like, you'll get by.

What works is, whenever you have something that you like SO much that you're like, f**k you, I'm doing this anyway, it's not 'kinda bad but kinda good', I want THIS one. In fact I'm going to do it twice as hard just to spite you, and plug away at it for years whether you like it or not... THAT is the kind of thing that sells into niche markets. You cannot just go into a niche market thinking it's not as big as MTV and the people will probably be glad you did their thing- you gotta be obsessive and hammer away at it, develop strong opinions, care.

Here's a question. It seems like you figure you 'get' hardstyle. Is there a genre in electronic that you think is done ALL WRONG, and you KNOW how it really ought to go and everybody is just maddeningly stupid and just don't GET it?

Do that. You probably won't end up doing that genre properly because you would be failing to 'get' some things about it, but you'll be doing something where you have strong opinons on how it should go, and that is really the only important thing in the long run


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## jinxtigr (Nov 3, 2009)

For instance- this excited the hell out of me, though I have never been able to do anything remotely like it-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uf3fpULe6Ig&feature=PlayList&p=BC9E109615C90F79&index=0&playnext=1

Jojo Mayer's "Nerve". I'm sure I'll get some mileage on trying to get elements of that type in there- not in the sense of 'I'm doing a track that's like this but not as good', but taking something I DO know how to do, and going 'what if the snare did more drum and bassy stuff?' or 'what if the bass guitar just makes sort of swells and bwoops, only loosely hooked to the drums? what if I threw some crazy effects on it and made it just a sound?'


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