The tension between music and business for independent musicians: a survey

In an attempt to find out how musicians in the UK perceive the tension between the music and the business side, after my previous post I have created a survey with several question I thought would be interesting for both myself and the people filling the survey, mostly musicians.

I have posted the survey on several Facebook groups, such as 'UK Bands, Promoters, Gigs', and, to my surprise, I received plenty of answers in less than 24 hours!

My survey has been filled by 92 musicians! Some of them showed interest in further discussing the issues and even sent me personal messages on Facebook.

Here are the questions and answers:

1. Please choose the option that best represents you.

2. Do you intend to pursue a career in music for a living or is music just a hobby?

3. Are you or have you ever been signed to a record label?

4. Please rank these in order of importance you believe they have in order to achieve success in a music career.

5. Please tick all the platforms that you use or have used in relation to your music:

6. Please tick all that apply to you:

7. Do you feel like these non-creative tasks take up too much time that you could've otherwise used to write/rehearse/improve your music-making? Would you prefer someone else took care of them so that you can dedicate more of your time to music?

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In addition to this question, respondents could were given a blank space where they could leave comments. The comments ranged from: 

'If music is your primary career, the business side of it is a must. How many bands or artists do you know where their music was mediocre, but had a great image, stage presence, direction, networking skills etc? Being percieved as 'good' is all about your audience's frame of mind. Getting them to think you're good is way more important, in my opinion, than actually being good, to start up your music career.'

and

'I feel much more in control of my own music when doing it'

to

'We're not marketers. We're musicians.

or

'The totally/mainly original troubadours I know definitely have to spend too much time on business.'

8. If you were to choose between: being signed with a major label which would take care of all non-creative aspects for you (finances, legal and copyright, booking&management, distribution, promotion, recording and production, etc.), at the cost of losing creative control over your music and/or image, what would you do?

The survey results show that indeed, musicians under the independent model spend quite a large amount of time doing non-creative tasks related to their music careers; a correlation can be noticed between earning a living solely off music and bigger number of hours spent on the business and production side (see Tables 1 and 2). The multi-skilling is also common in the majority of musicians: 62% record their own music, 80% maintain relationships with their fans via social media, 87% book their own gigs. 55% feel like these non-creative tasks take up too much time, which they would rather spend perfecting their music.