Welcome to this Rap Life Blog

My name is Sontwisted I am a Rapper-Producer out of Brooklyn NY I have been rapping for the past 28 years and have been making beats for the past 4 years. I started this blog to chronicle my journey through building a sustainable music career as an independent artist.

Starting out as an artist first doing music for the love of it and not trying to make money or even build a fan base there are a few things to know when deciding to do music professionally especially as an independent.
Firstly you have to be able to record whenever you want for as cheaply as possible, so I would recommend if you don’t already have one to set up a recording studio in your home. For the most basic setup you need a computer an audio interface (preferably usb), an xlr mic, and a daw (digital audio workstation-pro tools, fruity loops etc.) I personally recommend adobe audition if you are only doing vocals audacity also works and its free, an xlr cable, pop filter, headphones, and a reflection filter.

Secondly you need quality instrumentals if you don’t make beats or have a relationship with a producer, purchase quality beats online from producers hedzhigh.com, now I know a lot of online rappers don’t want to spend money on beats and want free beats or use tagged beats but if you are not willing to invest a couple of dollars into your own music how do you expect any one else to. when artist’s take the stance of well I’m not making any money off of my music so why should I spend money to buy beats that indicates to me that you don’t even believe in your own songs and if you won’t spend $25 for a beat then you definitely won’t spend $150 for mixing and mastering a song $20 a month for a website or email hosting you won’t spend $100 for Facebook ads or $65 for album artwork etc. how do you expect to sell any music without these things.

You have to treat your music as a business and in business you have to put up the money to get started develop the product or service create a way to engage and capture customers then market and sell to those customers before you make one dollar. In essence you are now the record label so those big advances you hear about artist’s signing for that’s on you now you are the record label giving yourself the advance to go hire producers to pay for mixing and mastering engineers to do album art work or photo shoots, to pay for videos, to pay for distribution to run marketing campaigns etc. you have to invest money into your career or you are just a hobbyist who is not trying to make any real money even the biggest artist’s jay-z, 50 cent Beyoncé etc. have to spend a couple million dollars to get their albums to sell and they have worldwide stardom and millions of fans why would you think you won’t have to spend money for you to sell.

If you are unfamiliar with any of the things I just stated do some research and educate yourself to know which service you can do yourself and which ones need to be outsourced how much it’s all going to cost and how long is it going to take to execute to get a realistic idea of what you will have to do to make a living off your music now I know I left out some things like merchandising and touring but again these are things you need to figure out for yourself if they make sense to undertake and what the process and cost will be. As indie musicians we can’t afford to take the cheap way out. like it or not you are competing directly with major and other indie artist’s for the same fans and dollars so your product has to be at least on par with theirs not just the sound quality but the visuals the fan interaction and the visibility. how can you compete with someone who has a budget and a plan when you have non even if it’s a small budget you can’t be a musician for no money it cost money to make music even from your basement.

I thank you for taking the time out to read my thoughts and I hope I have given you something to think about that will improve your musical journey.

I look forward to many more sometimes hard, sometimes ugly, always worth while experiences along my musical journey. Here’s to hopping that you are part of that journey.

If you’d like to hear the most recent milestone of that journey,click here to listen to That’s The Boom Bap beat Tape . Thank you for being a listener and for making it all matter

I will talk to you soon,
Sontwisted.

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