I asked Stuart Price, intellectual property lawyer and Managing Director of Birmingham’s Young & Lee Solicitors for his top 5 tips for independent music business. These are some pretty good guidelines that might end up saving you thousands one day.

I fail rather a lot. More often, I suspect, than you do. If there’s anything I could be said to excel at, it’s failure.

Now, I don’t say that in a self-deprecating way. To me, that’s a positive thing. Because I start an awful lot of things. I would explode if all of them went well. Mostly I like to draw people’s attention to the successes, but generally, I don’t mind if they know about the misfires.

Now, I guess I could be accused of not having the stickability to see things through to the bitter end in the face of adversity – but my philosophy in these matters is both ‘why make things hard for yourself?’ and ‘why should I not get to do the interesting, exciting and potentially successful thing just because the thing I’m working on has turned into a no-reward slog?’.

I’d rather be considered lazy and interesting, than a dull workhorse bashing away at the same unsuccessful project because of some misplaced sense of duty. You don’t have to finish everything you start – and I’d argue you should start far more things than you possibly have a hope of ever finishing.

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The more astute reader might have noticed that I have retired New Music Ideas – the spinoff site from New Music Strategies. Its purpose was to act as a place to review and alert the readership to sites and services that may (or may not) be helpful.

I link to the site, post a short sentence or two about what it purports to be – and you let me (and everyone else here) know if it’s any good, if you’ve had any experience with them and if there are other, better services around. I’ve imported all the other reviews I did from the old site to here – but here’s the first at its new home.

Music Submit takes your music and sends it to genre-specific radio stations, online music magazines, online music directories, blogs, podcasts, indie record labels, and other electronic music media. It starts at $35 for 100 submissions, and tops out at 1000 submissions for $210.

Essentially, you’re outsourcing something that takes time, research and effort. But is it worth the money?

Just a quick post to let you know that with thanks to my friend Ismael Valladolid Torres, The 20 Things e-book has now been translated into Spanish.

If you know anyone for whom that would be helpful, feel free to pass it around. Like the English and Chinese versions, the e-book is totally free. Enjoy.

Download here.