The French member of the mysterious virtual band Lucy, Racquel and Me shares tips on being indie.
I'm far from a 'wizkid', just a regular practicing novice … but 3 tips come to mind:
For a long time I ran a website where I reviewed albums of independent and non-independent artists. In my youth I was an FM radio host and did promotion for Indies. I guess it's in my DNA. And it's by supporting each other that the circle of people who have access to our music can grow, each of us then being good enough to convince the listener. I like to discover new songs, new artists, and to share these discoveries. If I can help a little on my own scale, to make them gain some listeners, my goal is achieved.
As the French say - "The small streams make the big rivers" 😄
Well My opinion is biased because I mainly use Twitter. I'm present on Facebook and Instagram but not very much. I concentrate on a single network because I don't have the time to disperse myself, even if, ideally, this is probably what should be done. As a professional it would be essential, but as an independent it's impossible, at least for me. As far as I can judge, Twitter is efficient, I have a little more than 4k followers, but I don't analyse my results, number of retweets, follows, unfollows, etc ... what I should probably do to be more efficient.
Always the same way. I use Distrokid for streaming platforms, whereas I upload myself on SoundCloud or Bandcamp and Youtube. I'm rather happy with this distributor. Simple interface, efficient, rather fast processing, for a reasonable processing time and a correct price when you publish regularly. I recommend it without hesitation.
Because of our configuration, scattered over several continents, everything is done remotely. I've been doing this for more than 20 years with other projects, so it's now routine.
Lucy sends me the lyrics, I put it to music, I make a quick demo, I send it to Racquel for the choice of the tone.
Once that's done, I'm looking for musicians to do, in colour, what my demo was doing in black and white. For Home One Day, our last release. Bass and keyboard were taken care of by Dave in England, guitars by Salvatore in Italy. Cyril from Belgium did the mix and mastering. I chose a royalty free picture of a Danish photographer, René.
Country music, I had the Eagles in mind for this track. That's the instruction I gave to the musicians, with Take It Easy as an example. As for the text, I can't say what inspired Lucy.
My reference album is The Beatles White Album for its eclecticism. So, in our music, some tracks are blues, folk, bossa, country … and all the Californian soft rock music where the vocal harmonies are essential, and the melody is the strong point … no question to ask them, just "thank you for the music" as Abba would sing 😄
I use to have 4000 vinyls. But I'm a streaming boy now. So neither.
We're on both. Bandcamp is for selling music - I've sold one single in four years :) But our songs are free on our website so, it doesn't matter. Spotify is a must at the moment. I'm a subscriber. Having access to so much music for so little money is amazing for someone who was saving hard to buy albums when I was a teenager. But it's also worrying about the economics of music. The return of live music was becoming the way to make a living, but it's obviously not a good time for it [2020 covid-19 pandemic], you see the fragility of the system. And then all the bands can't perform, our virtual band is an example of that.
Reaper, excellent DAW, cheap and very powerful.
K7 Magical Mystery Tour by The Beatles. As vinyl - Chuck Berry's Best Of
Our next release is planned in a few days A groovy track this time! 😉
---
Have a listen Lucy, Racquel and Me or follow them on Twitter. If you're an artist and would like to be featured on the Songwhip Blog reach out to me via email or messenger.