Songwriter/musician/performer's market

I don't know the answer.... but I had a friend who had an amazing band and wrote some great songs, he told me that if your good, and can get a label to sign you, you get that chance and that chance only..... if you get signed once and you don't catch on..Thats pretty much it!! nobody else will touch you... Seems kind of unfair and I really don't know if that holds true today, this was about ten years ago, but i new Jay and Greg Owen from the American Breed "Bend me shape me anyway you want me" and greg told me pretty much the same thing and they had a number one with that song in the 60's. Really tough business.....

As far as rock bands go, it's 90% about grinding it out by playing gigs constantly. It's also about longevity - how long can you stand to be together as an unsuccessful band. Most bands take several (5 - 10 years) before they get any real record label recognition.

Small bands play their local clubs, then get an agent to book them at clubs in neighboring towns and larger events, and then go on club tours if they're able. They send demos to record companies and sell them on tour, but it's largely about building up a fan base. The quickest way to get record company attention is to win a music competition. Typically a band that has done all this can get signed with a small label and continue touring and if they build up enough of a fan base, their contract will be sold to a bigger label who will invest money into advertising and tour support and new recordings. It also helps to be in LA or Nashville where record scouts go fishing for bands, rather than in the middle of nowhere.

Touring is a non-negotiable and overnight success is a pipe dream.

I'm not sure how it works for other musical areas (classical musicians, etc.), and the internet is certainly revolutionizing the industry. You can get your music to thousands of people just by using MySpace.

The music industry looks to me to be less well defined than the publishing industry (and have more corruption, but that's another thread), but you've asked about several separate things. Others have covered how bands and performers get signed, but songwriting (as in writing songs that others on major labels will pick to record) is a bit different. As I understand it, the first step is to move to Nashville where networking is a neccesity, the rest is getting a good demo of your songs recorded, then 'pitch' them to the bigname acts who would perform a song such as yours.

I don't really "know" these things from any personal experience, but I learned a bit from years of reading Usenet newsgroups rec.audio.pro (a local band is attractive to a major label if it's got a lot of fans and the bars fill up with people coming to hear them play) and rec.music.makers.songwriting. There was also a lot of activity and discussion by unsigned and nearly-signed artists and songwriters on the message boards at the long-defunct mp3.com (before it "sold out" and became a signed-only pay-only format for the major labels, or whatever it became) from about 1998-2000 when they claimed to host a half million songs from unsigned artists. The equivalent might now be happening at the discussion boards on Soundclick, Garageband and other such "unsigned" mp3 hosts, as well as those same and similar newsgroups.