Over a million Twitter followers, no record label, a MacBook Pro (running Ableton Live and SooperLooper), and a cello.

This has garnered quite a bit of success for Zoe Keating, a solo celloist, who holds the #1 spot on the iTunes classical charts. It has also led to licensing out her music for a film that debuted at The Toronto Hot Docs Festival, and is her full time job.

This is the prime example of what [most] indie musicians are after. A way to live life making music, without the need for a second income. But what makes her story interesting is that she doesn’t strive for the attention of a record label, nor does she even want it. She wants to keep the responsibilities, and of course the revenue, from all of her work.

Not an easy task to accomplish, but she’s done it. She would be a good person to follow for musicians/bands new to the world of internet presence.

To find out more about Zoe, check out: TechCrunch (on her web fame) and Wired.com (which is more about what she does, and how she does it), which each have an interview, and article about her.

Even more interesting is her blog response after these interviews, where she takes the time to answer the questions as she wanted to.

I can’t help noticing that most of the signed musicians I’ve known are broke or struggling. Those on small labels keep their day jobs. Mid-level bands, they run through their advance quickly and then they make a living by touring constantly so that they can sell t-shirts. It will be several millennia before the amount they owe the record label is recouped out of the band’s royalty, and they don’t own the recordings. New music/modern classical artists seem to sustain themselves with teaching and maybe performing as they get more well known.

So I’ve just watched all this and since I’m realistic that my brand of instrumental cello music is never going to go platinum anyway, I might as well save myself some suffering, release it myself and keep all the money.

It goes more in to depth about her views on the music industry, and how what she does works for her. She also goes into how people can make it work for them.

Her blog post can be found here.

As always, everyone is different, you have to find your own way, but this shows that it is within reach, you just have to work for it.

Technorati Tags: cello, DIY, zoe keating

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 2nd, 2009 at 9:32 am and is filed under Music Business, Music Culture, Music Promotion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.