Indie labels tend to be on the front lines of the music industry - down in the trenches, trying to figure out how to get good music to the fans on only a fraction of the budget of their competitors. Fighting that kind of battle requires a lot of creativity, but make no mistake about it - a lot of indie label (and their artists) DO thrive by making their own rules. To survive, indie labels have to let the business lead them instead of trying to cram their realities into conventional wisdom, and there's a lot we can all learn from how they make it work. Check out these Five Indie Label Lessons and see what you can apply to your own music career.

Playing live is one of the best - heck, maybe THE best - ways of building your fanbase, but how valuable your gigs are depends on what you do with your audience once you have them through the venue doors. Find out how to make the most of your audience at your shows - and how to win over the new fans that are coming to see you for the first time.

Speaking of those people coming to see you for the first time, find out the importance of playing for strangers.

What do you think about when you hear one of your favorite songs? "Whoah....what a great marketing campaign!"

It's not?

Well, of course it isn't - and if you're a musician, that is an important thing to remember. As necessary as it is in today's industry for musicians to treat their budding music careers like a business, it is equally necessary to make sure your to-do list items are ranked in the right order - with music at the top of the list.

It's a simple point, but one that is easy to lose sight of. A lot of musicians invest a lot of time into studying and analyzing debates about which social networking tool, software platform, marketing scheme - etc, etc, etc - is top of the heap right now, in hopes of divining the perfect plan to get their music out there - and while there is certainly value in approaching your music promotion/distribution/and so on methodically, getting too knee-deep in all of the debates about this stuff can be downright distracting if you're not careful. It's very easy to lose track of your music in the shuffle.

As a musician, the most important thing you will do for your music career is take your music seriously and make it a priority. Companies with huge budgets might be able to throw enough money at marketing a shallow music catalog so that its popularity exceeds it substance - but that is a luxury most up and coming musicians don't have (and even with plenty of money, that doesn't always work). The best way of connecting with your fans and keeping them engaged is to continue making music they want to hear. Our real commodity in the music industry is that swooning feeling you get when you hear your favorite song. You can play all kinds of games to get people to check out your music - but if you don't give them something they want to hear, then its "game over" anyway.

Again, treating your music like a business is important, and in today's music industry, musicians are called on to wear a lot of hats - and you will definitely have to wear them to succeed. But make the wise business decision to put your product first and make sure your music gets the attention from you it deserves. That's the best way to make sure other people will want to pay attention to it down the line.

Learn more about why the music matters most, and explore other Music Industry Quick Tips.

1. John Mellencamp said the internet is an "A-Bomb" and U2's manager Paul McGuiness wrote an article called How to Save the Music Industry for GQ that said a lot of bad things about the internet and those of us who write on it. Queue lots of people writing on the internet about them being old, and, well, yes, we have just another week on the internet. If you want my two cents - while I don't cotton to being called a gremlin by Mr. McGuiness, and while I certainly don't agree with many - maybe most - of his assessments and plotting (or Mellencamp's, for that matter), I'd feel a bit silly to think that people who have built decades long, successful music careers have absolutely nothing of value to say. Do these guys sound out of touch? Yes, in many ways. Do they raise a few valid concerns? Well, yeah, a few. Like politics and divorce, the truth about the music industry is seldom found in the extremes. The internet is neither devil nor savior - three cheers for the middle ground. What do you think?
2. Digital Music News posted this list of the Ten Most Disastrous Music Industry Deals of the past decade. Kind of awesome.
3. MicControl offers these tips for turning your fans into the those rabid kinds of fans that have nicknames like Deadheads, Parrotheads, and Juggalos (sorry, Tila Tequila).
4. An interesting - some might say eye-opening - look at media consumption in Britain, as shared on Digital Music News. What are your fans doing? They're watching TV, apparently.
5. What does it mean to "make it" in the music industry? Share your thoughts.