Starting your career off independently is a very traditional way to start, an artist will rarely be signed before their debut album is released.
Artists like Kendrick Lamar had good luck getting signed from a very young age, however, a lot of people find the contracts they signed when they were younger to be a creative prison and this is why a lot more artists are pushing your artists to be independent whether it’s in film or music.
When people say independence, my mind and a lot of other people’s minds probably jump to music. Independent artists, or Indie artists, have been around and have been popular for decades but music isn’t the only place where people can be independent.
Nearly every entertainment industry, even gambling can be independent and a lot of independent sites found at Fruity Slots will be made by a small team instead of a big developer.
Francis Ford Coppola
One of the biggest examples of independent artists is the legendary director, Francis Ford Coppola. Some of my all-time favorite films are made by this man and his being independent is both a great and sad story.
After the success of The Godfather Parts One and Two and Apocalypse Now, Coppola put out a film that was a major failure, partnered with some bad financial decisions that saw the director go bankrupt.
By this point in his career, he needed to do any film to get money so that’s what he did. He had a long string of bad films that did poorly and lost him some of his credibility as a director.
With no backing from a big studio, Coppola has put his focus on one last film that is set to release this year. This film is completely funded by him and has some of the biggest working actors in the world attached, with Adam Driver playing the lead.
Even with the credentials of Coppola’s career and the actors involved, the film is struggling to find a studio with worries over the release date and marketing playing a big part in this.
I would love to see this film in an iMax theater and I sincerely hope the rights get bought so we can give one of the greatest directors of all time a proper send-off.
Frank Ocean
For people who are unaware of Frank Ocean, he is one of the biggest R&B artists in the world. His career has been a whirlwind with contracts as he started fully independent and signed a deal just before his debut album, Channel Orange, was released.
Frank Ocean has been very vocal about his disapproval of the deal he signed with Def Jam, he is the best example of artists preferring to be independent. One of the best musical stories of the last decade is the story between Def Jam and Frank Ocean, where Frank Ocean released a dummy album to get out of his contract and then released the real album ‘Blonde’ a day after which got instant success.
The success he got from Blonde and leaving his contract gave him $2 million in album sales alone, proving to be one of the best stories of the last decade.
The lack of contract allows an artist like Frank Ocean, and even Taylor Swift, to take their time and make the music they want to make with complete freedom. We are seeing this with Frank Ocean because of his distance in between albums and he can do this because he is in control.
These two are just my personal favorite independent artists but a lot are out there and need our support more than the big studios do. Fresh off the SAG-Aftra writer strike last year, it feels like we need to cherish all the creatives we have in the world and show full support for all artists.
