One of the things that we’ve touched upon on Indielab is how to finance your album project. We saw recently how some bands are really getting creative about finding money for recording and marketing themselves. Hamfatter hit up the Dragons Den for £75,000 to finance the release of their next record and against all the odds actually got the money! It seems amazing that in a music industry that is hemorrhaging money with plunging sales and rapidly shrinking companies that a renowned businessman felt that this was a goer, especially after the performance on the show from the band which I’ll be honest and say I thought was like a nervous pub band.

The bottom line is that they sold themselves as an ongoing business concern rather than on the basis of the artistic worth of their music, which is a good lesson to learn! By emphasizing the gigs, previous sales and previous earnings they had done they managed to convince Peter Jones that his money wouldn’t just be a donation to fund their art but instead a genuine business investment that would see a return. When you are approaching record labels or other investors it’s important that you don’t just make the pitch entirely about the music unless they are the sort of person or organization who likes giving away money for free.

Links to related articles

http://musicblog.merseyblogs.co.uk/2008/07/hamfatter_are_a_trio_from.html