I wrote an article last year about “the pain of beeing professional”. I got much positive feedback for that. However, i recently found a very interesting similar post about that at a wellknown open source guys blog. He wrote about Radiohead: they gave their download away for free, asking people for donating money for the download. People paid. Radiohead got lots of promotion and got a bigger label than. Seems that everybody has won, except the music industry, which lost a chance of making some money.

Recently i talked to Heim from Human Bloodfeast and he told me that they invested so much money and didn’t anything back except for a bit of glory and some reviews. Well, i really think that we (= the underground) should STOP RIGHT NOW to invest money in music; investing money destroys the fun of playing. It’s getting us under pressure. It’s destroying our art.

My decision: fun, creativity and art can only exist when i am free. I am only free when i don’t have to care about “professionality”. I am underground- and here are my rules for saving the underground scene and beeing underground yourself:

1) Nearly everybody of us has the possibility to make some home recording. Use it! To be honestly, don’t pay 1500 for a studio when you can get a own little studio for that money (PC, Monitor, Phonic Firefly and some micros). I don’t think a studio for 1500 eur is better than what you can do yourself. Don’t pay money for a studio! The Label does that, nobody else! If the Label doesn’t do that, offer home-recording to the label. Record within your possibilitys!

2) Nobody must pay 20.000 Euro for a perfect studio. If you are an underground band, you will never (in most cases) sell so much CD’s to get your money back. If you record in a studio, don’t pay yourself for your recordings!

3) Don’t print CD’s. Printing CD’s is the domain of the labels. They do it. They pay for that. They get the money back. They have community.

4) Don’t pay money to your label. They print it- they get the money- they pay for it. If they don’t pay for the manufactoring, they don’t believe in you.

5) Don’t found your own label. That’s not your domain. Do you really want to care about sellings? Do you want to buy services for other bands than yours? Is your community so big that you get the money of all your releases back? Do you have the time- remember, you should practice instead of fill excel sheets!

6) If you have no label, create CD-Rom’s and offer free downloads. This is your chance to get a community and supporters. Use Creative Commons for saving your rights! You will not get much money if cooperating with a label- so you will not loose money if giving away your music for free.

7) Support other musicians and work with people who support licenses like Creative Commons! They are like you! Help building up a music community- this doesn’t cost anything, makes fun and gives you space to develope own ideas

Support Jamendo. Do this and upload your music to free music communitys. Why not? Less people PAY for your music. But much more people would listen to it, when it’s free- and maybe the buy your merchandise or donate some money.

9) Create merchandise products when you feel your community is strong enough. Merchandise is lesser expensive, but you can get all the money of it. If you haven’t a community, choose Spreadshirt as manufacturer.

10) Spread the word of freedom. Musicscene is changing. Nobody has the money to buy all interesting releases. Most people will buy their big favourites, like Maiden, maybe. There is no money for underground bands anymore. Make your music free and be part of the scene. Or sell 100 pieces of your latest CD and stay unknown. In a free music scene lots of musicians have space.

Your comments, as usual, are appreciated; answer here, in the forums or via e-mail.