Project Title: Musical Rags to Riches: How do Small Artists Make it Big?
BASIS Advisor: Mr. Heilbronn
"The luxurious lifestyle of a music artist, with sold-out tours and adoring fans, is envied by many young artists hoping to reach similar status. From the outside looking in, getting rich from making music seems easy enough. But many people seem to forget the years of dedication that their favorite artist most likely had to endure to get to where they are. Focusing mainly on artists from R&B, pop, and rap genres, I will explore how
small artists can produce their music using independent labels, grow their audience through social media, and eventually have best-selling songs played through streaming platforms around the world. Using information collected from literature reviews and interviews with experienced individuals in the music business, I intend to use this knowledge to get a better understanding of how artists use the resources available to
them in this modern age. I hope that my final presentation will alter the way we listen to music, by conveying all of the hard work that goes into creating and sharing music."
My Posts
Week Six: Interview #3 – Working with Artists
May 13, 2021
Hello again! This week I was able to conduct an interview with emerging indie artist, Charles on TV. Charles is a 24-year-old indie artist, who already has released two singles, and has another one releasing today. As a high school student, Charles would record covers of popular songs and release them on Youtube, but he […]
Week Five: Interview #2 – Learning About the Business
May 04, 2021
This week I was able to have another incredible interview, this time with a young individual hoping to one day work in entertainment law, named Felix. While speaking with Felix I was able to get a better idea of how some music marketing businesses actually work. Felix had been interested in music since a young […]
Week Four: My First Interview
Apr 26, 2021
Hello! This week I was able to have my first interview with an emerging artist, a young producer from Brooklyn by the name of Isaiah. Isaiah first began making music at the age of 15, by skipping school to work construction, allowing him to save up for a laptop. He began by making trap and […]
Week Three: Researching PR Companies
Apr 19, 2021
Hello again! This week was pretty slow, I spent most of my time researching different music marketing/PR companies and reaching out to them for internships. These marketing companies are catered towards more independent artists, though many of them work with signed artists as well. In addition, different companies offer different services, and some are more […]
Week Two: Planning and Movie Time
Apr 11, 2021
Hi again, everyone! This week I decided to watch a documentary for some additional research while I was still planning out how I want to approach research for this project. The documentary I decided to watch is called Artifact, it came out in 2013 and was directed by Jared Leto. The film follows Leto’s band […]
Week One: Adding Some Structure
Apr 04, 2021
Welcome back, everyone! On Monday morning I had my Senior Project Defense Presentation and was able to get some really great feedback to work with. One of the major issues brought up was the arbitrary definition of the word ‘success’. My project focuses on how artists become successful, but in order to measure that, I […]
Week Zero: An Introduction to Breaking Into The Music Business
Mar 30, 2021
Hello everyone! My name is Asha Wills, and I’ve been a student at BASIS for seven years. Having been a music enthusiast for as long as I can remember, I was always curious about the behind the scene process artists go through to create songs and release them to their listeners. Last year I took […]