Describing yourself as an independent artist these days is a double-edged sword. Your sound is either too distinct to define, or too similar to people who have already made it. It’s already hard enough to sound original to an audience, but the industry demands a more marketable form of originality. The hardest part isn’t even that. With the way things work now, it’s all about optics. Sterilized perfection, prepackaged and ready to be sold to the highest bidder. It required a lot of work, yes, but that work rarely took the attention away from the music. Being independent always involved some form of hustle. That scope has drastically widened into indentured servitude to a system that’s predatory to everyone, not just artists. Labor used to be simpler: make music, share it, and maybe book a show. Most “indie” artists now have to act as their own label. The industry was partly beneficial to artists not only in helping them succeed, but in helping them maintain the balance required to achieve that success. When it came down to it, the industry fronted most of the load when it involved mass exposure: Media Management/Marketing, Artist Development, Release Strategy. Artists used to give input, but they were never meant to carry out the entire machine by themselves. And then came TikTok. At the height of Covid, so many artists had no other way to find success because of the worldwide shutdown. TikTok allowed these artists to directly connect with a massive audience on a very personal level. The industry saw this explosion of music discovery and viral upkeep and decided it was time to take a step back. Now that artists had a platform to prove they were worth the investment, there was no need for industry to rely on four different departments when they could just depend on the ARTIST to develop themselves. Collect the audience that a label would profit from. Copyright and distribute their own music. That very music's creative direction is being crushed under the weight of all this back-end bullshit. Too many artists these days are falling into one of two categories for this very reason. The algorithm rewards artists who amass any form of engagement and the industry pays attention to the algorithm. This formula doesn't leave much room for artists to branch out in a genuine manner. The risk within the art has been traded for sounding almost indistinguishable to an already well-established artist. The second you decide to stray from the norm, you are caught in a nasty cycle. You haven't gained engagement because the algorithm refuses to push it, and you haven't gotten pushed because the audience refuses to engage. This so-called independence traps you into these boxes. They put you up against insurmountable odds, and expect you to perform under immense pressure. One would think that pressure makes gems, and it truly does, but we never get to see it. Most artists refer to this as a humiliation ritual. You spend weeks working on a song, all the while balancing the promotion and content for it, only to get 10 likes and one save. Independently planning, editing, and recording music videos, probably from your iPhone. For what? The visibility you might gain even after all that is almost guaranteed to turn you into a one-hit wonder. It comes as no surprise that most just give up. It forces you to resent the process and dread touching FL over time, because now it’s not only about making music and sharing it. You now have to carry an entire system on your back because the industry is too lazy to care these days. The mental toll of all this would drive anyone up the wall. For the people that use music as an outlet, it seems that they would much rather make music and not even worry about taking the steps that lead to the recognition they deserve. Ever since the labels started solely focusing on engagement, the money has lined their pockets exponentially. Why focus on one artist? Why place all the risk in them, when they can just look at the metrics and benefit from the proof within them? Push the labor onto the artist and you now have less time and money invested in potential liability. now all you have to do is pick from the few that survive the gauntlet. .