By Lana Crowley

I've been a member of the independent artist community for more than three years now, and I've had a lot of time to meet new people, learn about them, and to hear an enormous amount of incredible music.

But one thing is absent within this community.

Respect.

I've spent so many hours trying to figure out why it is that indies have such a small amount of respect for each other, and I still have no answers.

When you look at the major artists out in the world, they have enormous amounts of respect for one another. They hang out together, sing together, and generally treat each other like equals. Isn’t that what we are? Equals? We're all struggling to be heard by the public. We're all essentially considered unsolicited, and most of us have never gone to a major pro studio and had a major production done on any of our tunes.

Is it about competition? Do Independents feel they have to compete with one another for listeners? Or is it just plain disrespect? Have you ever gone out of your way to say, Thank You, to another artist for listening to your music? For buying a CD? OR for Plugging your band or music to people they know?

This one is a big deal to me, because I plug artists I like to anyone and everyone I come in contact with, although, most artists that I plug never know I do this unless someone purchases a CD and tells them, or something to this extent.

I find a lot of artists in this community expect you to listen to their music, and to me that's wrong. Having someone listen to your music is a blessing, sharing your creativity is a gift, and people need to treat it is such. Artists also need to realize that it takes everyone else just as much creativity to create their music as it does them.

This artist I know online pretty well put a song up, a new one, and went to a bulletin board to promote this song and get feedback from other artists. And I was absolutely shocked at the response she received from her peers. It went beyond giving constructive criticism. They were saying things like 'you should throw your guitar away' and 'you sing like a chicken,'.

She laughed it off, but I know she had to be hurt. I know I would have been.

So how do we turn our community into one that shows respect for each other? I wish I had the answer. There will always be those who believe they have to shake the cage, and be different, or who feel they're not getting enough attention. So they throw a tantrum. And there are other who think that if you're nice to everyone you come in contact with, you're an ass-kisser.

So - all we can do is work on ourselves, try to give support to our peers, and tell them that you're proud to be a member of this community. And maybe if more of us do this, it'll rub off and others will follow suit.

I happen to love this dysfunctional family we have here in cyberspace and I want to see it flourish and grow in the eyes of the world.

If you feel the same way, just try a little harder to show some respect for the other artists out here trying just as hard as you to become 'somebody'.

True.

I believe mutual exposure is the key. Indie communties like dmusic remains very similar to a big chatroom in the sense that we all communicate in cyberspace and we're only exposed to each other through the songs we download.

You made a nice comparison using major label musicians (and you are so right about the respect thing). It's just that we need a little more than just "community activity" to gain mutual respect.

You gotta see each other. You gotta see each other perform, talk with each other (as in real world talk, audio-type). That starts a friendly relationship that carries over the internet, respectably. And than the plugging becomes much better and frequent, too.

To drive the point home: how bad would you feel insulting a guy on the internet that you've never seen or known? Not much, if not not at all, Right? But how would you feel if you deliberately insulted your buddy or another band you're friends with here on dmusic? Now that's a different story.

...forgot this....
...And even if your buddy sounds really bad and he uploads a really bad song, you can break it to him politely, in the nicest way possible. It's your duty as a friend (to tell him he sucks - in a nice way of course).

Yes Shinkaide .. and If I have constructive critism to give to someone I consider a friend .. I would most likely do it in private .. lol.. which os what I mostly do when I am asked for comments ... because I have noticed that when you give constructive critism to people ... someone always takes that as a invitation to run with nastiness... -sigh ...

You are SO right about the face to face thing ... there is a BIG difference in the way you see people after you have met them in person ... but .. it is not necessarily true that this is the onlyy way to garner respect for someone .. Just thik about it ... lets use the majors on this again .. There are ALOT of greats in music who have died... but their community still garners those people with a tremendous amount of respect .. even though they never met them ...

as well as us BTW ... we garner those people with tremendous respect as well ...