Trent Reznor te da consejos si te quieres dedicar a esto de la música

Hace unos días leí en el foro oficial de Nine Inch Nails un post publicado por el propio Trent Reznor en el cual exponía, de forma clara y concisa, la forma en la que él concibe la industria musical, arriesgándose a dar consejos a todos aquellos que quieran iniciarse en esto de la música y carezcan de sello discográfico. La entrada original es ésta, para aquellos que se apañen con el inglés.

If you are an unknown / lesser-known artist trying to get noticed / established:
* Establish your goals. What are you trying to do / accomplish? If you are looking for mainstream super-success (think Lady GaGa, Coldplay, U2, Justin Timberlake) - your best bet in my opinion is to look at major labels and prepare to share all revenue streams / creative control / music ownership. To reach that kind of critical mass these days your need old-school marketing muscle and that only comes from major labels. Good luck with that one.
If you're forging your own path, read on.
* Forget thinking you are going to make any real money from record sales. Make your record cheaply (but great) and GIVE IT AWAY. As an artist you want as many people as possible to hear your work. Word of mouth is the only true marketing that matters.
To clarify:
Parter with a TopSpin or similar or build your own website, but what you NEED to do is this - give your music away as high-quality DRM-free MP3s. Collect people's email info in exchange (which means having the infrastructure to do so) and start building your database of potential customers. Then, offer a variety of premium packages for sale and make them limited editions / scarce goods. Base the price and amount available on what you think you can sell. Make the packages special - make them by hand, sign them, make them unique, make them something YOU would want to have as a fan. Make a premium download available that includes high-resolution versions (for sale at a reasonable price) and include the download as something immediately available with any physical purchase. Sell T-shirts. Sell buttons, posters... whatever.
Don't have a TopSpin as a partner? Use Amazon for your transactions and fulfillment. [www.amazon.com]
Use TuneCore to get your music everywhere. [www.tunecore.com]
Have a realistic idea of what you can expect to make from these and budget your recording appropriately.
The point is this: music IS free whether you want to believe that or not. Every piece of music you can think of is available free right now a click away. This is a fact - it sucks as the musician BUT THAT'S THE WAY IT IS (for now). So... have the public get what they want FROM YOU instead of a torrent site and garner good will in the process (plus build your database).
The Beastie Boys' site offers everything you could possibly want in the formats you would want it in - available right from them, right now. The prices they are charging are more than you should be charging - they are established and you are not. Think this through.
The database you are amassing should not be abused, but used to inform people that are interested in what you do when you have something going on - like a few shows, or a tour, or a new record, or a webcast, etc.
Have your MySpace page, but get a site outside MySpace - it's dying and reads as cheap / generic. Remove all Flash from your website. Remove all stupid intros and load-times. MAKE IT SIMPLE TO NAVIGATE AND EASY TO FIND AND HEAR MUSIC (but don't autoplay). Constantly update your site with content - pictures, blogs, whatever. Give people a reason to return to your site all the time. Put up a bulletin board and start a community. Engage your fans (with caution!) Make cheap videos. Film yourself talking. Play shows. Make interesting things. Get a Twitter account. Be interesting. Be real. Submit your music to blogs that may be interested. NEVER CHASE TRENDS. Utilize the multitude of tools available to you for very little cost of any - Flickr / YouTube / Vimeo / SoundCloud / Twitter etc.
If you don't know anything about new media or how people communicate these days, none of this will work. The role of an independent musician these days requires a mastery of first hand use of these tools. If you don't get it - find someone who does to do this for you. If you are waiting around for the phone to ring or that A & R guy to show up at your gig - good luck, you're going to be waiting a while.
Hope this helps, and I'll scour responses for intelligent comments I can respond to.

Y gracias al magnífico blog: Oh! my blog!I Can't believe it podemos disfrutar de una traducción en castellano. Aunque a modo de resumen del texto traducido, podemos sacar las siguientes perlas:

...Olvídate de conseguir dinero vendiendo discos. Haz que tu disco sea bueno, bonito y que te salga barato, y REGALALO. Como artista, lo que te interesa es llegar a tanta gente como te sea posible. El boca a oreja es el único márketing que importa.
...Asóciate con TopSpin o algo similar o créate tu propio sitio web, pero lo que DEBES hacer es esto: regala tu música en forma de archivos digtales sin DRM en alta calidad, consiguiendo la dirección de correo de la gente a cambio (implica que necesitas la infrastructura para poder hacerlo) y comienza a crearte una base de datos de clientes potenciales. Entonces, ofrece una gama de productos premium de pago, y haz que sean ediciones limitadas (bienes escasos). Basa el precio y las cantidades disponibles en lo que creas que puedes vender. Haz que los paquetes sean especiales – hazlos a mano, firmalos, hazlos únicos, haz que sean algo que TU quisieras tener como fan.
...Ten una idea realista de lo que puedes ganar así y hazte un presupuesto para el disco que vaya en consonancia. Tienes que darte cuenta de lo siguiente: la música ES gratis quieras o no. Cualquier obra musical que se te venga a la cabeza esta disponible gratis. Es un hecho. Es una mierda de cara al músco, PERO ES LO QUE HAY (por ahora). Así que lo que tienes que hacer es conseguir que el público consiga lo que quieren DE TI en lugar de sacarlo de un sitio de torrents, y obtener algun beneficio en el proceso (aumentar tu base de datos de clientes potenciales).

Fuente: Oh! my blog!I Can't believe it