Hi Tom,
My name is Inda. I am a singer. I mostly sing indie rock and contemporary “classical” music. I am urgently looking for work, collaborations, opinions, advice (praise?) as I am sick and tired of working on my own. I am based in London but I have no particular ties at the moment – i.e. I am free as a bird=I can travel the whole world if I want to!. This is what I sound like when I sing French indie pop with a Brazilian forro touch (listen to file: Mal Encodé). I sang in an indie choir called Flop et Tout Le Tremblement, signed on “Les Disques Bien”, our album is coming out this month.

And, if you want a contemporary “classical” taste, you can find me under my full name: Inda Yansané on YouTube singing songs from Guatemala, written by Héron and composed by Nafylian (world exclusive!!!). This video was recorded at Les Rencontres musicales du Magnoac two years ago (i.e. I sing even better now), just to give you a general idea.
Any bright idea?
Many thanks.
x Inda

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Hello Inda
The first step towards achieving the results you want is probably to move your music and activities online. Your appeal for support and collaboration needs to be made in a public place where everyone can see and hear you.  Your very first step should be to create a “musician” profile of your own on MySpace – put a few of your best recordings there for everyone to hear. MySpace can act as a kind of shop window for your talents, and allow you to showcase up to 6 songs, free of charge. Ideally you would then also add videos, photographs, a short biography and an email address where you can be contacted.

You say you’re urgently looking for work –  and unfortunately for most singers and musicians right now, even extremely good ones,  paid work is  hard to find.  But without a MySpace page, your chances are reduced even further. Of course there are  alternative websites which offer a similar, and perhaps even better service – Reverbnation, Last.fm, Vox and Facebook being a few of the most popular. But MySpace is still the most universally used showcase for artists and it’s important to have a page there as a starting point. See Andrew Dubber’s New Music Strategies for the detailed argument.

And you WILL be able to seek collaborations, opinions, advice (and praise!) from listeners and fellow musicians anywhere in the world, once you’ve created an online page to reflect your work and abilities. You’ll be able to make connections with music fans and fellow musicians by asking them to add you as a “friend”…   Talk to a lot of people and listen to a lot of music online. If people like your voice and your music they will certainly let you know. Listening to fellow artists, and exchanging feedback with them is a great learning process that helps all of us focus our work and improve our chances of success.

My radio show BBC Introducing: Fresh On The Net focuses on music that can be heard free and legally online. So when you have a page where your tunes can be heard, use our Recommend Music link to send us the URL and we’ll be sure to give your music a listen and consider it for airplay

Kind regards

Tom Robinson