Artists dedicate their entire lives to their craft, but often neglect self-promotion. This is especially true in underground music, where many have released songs or albums they worked very hard on, only to receive an underwhelming response.
“It’s a very gradual effort,” says Charles Iwuc of Fieldhouse, an independent artist development company based in Austin, TX. “Nothing’s going to happen overnight or in six months. You set goals and then achieve them. And within a year, you’ll see a huge difference in where you were a year before.”
Marketing often feels antithetical to the craft itself, so it is understandable that many would be more focused on the music. Unfortunately, in order to reach fans, musicians must promote themselves with consistent dedication.
“A lot of people will spend thousands of dollars on a studio, get everything lined up like a checklist, and they nail it except for the end part where you have to pitch it to people,” Charles explains. “Your album that you care so much about, it sucks to see only a hundred plays.”
Charles cut his teeth as a teenager, playing guitar in various pop/punk bands in the Northeast emo scene. His role in these bands often evolved to a managerial position, even for projects where he wasn’t the songwriter.
“I always liked to book our shows, promote the show, design the merch, design the layout of the album,” Charles explains. “Then in my mid-20s, the band I was in at the time, we all moved to different areas.”
After that, Charles made the shift from being on the stage to being behind the scenes. He ended up in Brooklyn recording local bands out of his apartment, and learned more and more about production.
“I fell in love with it and decided I didn’t need to be on stage anymore. I just wanted to be at the helm of the computer, recording bands and helping them sound as professional as possible.”
The pandemic hit and the industry shut down. Charles left New York and moved back home to the Virgin Islands. “I stopped doing recording, but I fell in love with the local music scene down there again.”
Soon, he started managing one of his friends, Moss Henry. Charles helped with design, aesthetic, and website, while Moss handled songwriting and performing. This helped Moss gain some recognition while focusing on the things he was passionate about.
When Charles moved to Austin in 2024, he realized it was the perfect city to apply his knowledge gained over decades in the music industry, and launched Fieldhouse.
“It’s been so fun to meet all these local creatives in Austin. Every month I’m reaching out to them,” Charles says. “And now, people are starting to reach out to me.”
While Fieldhouse is off to a good start, Charles is working on more ideas, including the upcoming addition of their own music review blog.
“When I reach out to these music blogs to have the artists I’m working with get reviewed, some of them are questionable. Some of them are amazing, but the amazing ones are hard to reach the editors,” he explains.
Charles himself loves to write about music and discover new artists, so he plans to launch the Rec Room blog. The blog will cover both artists he is working with and artists that he recommends.
“It’ll be mostly local artists. There’ll be some big names that I’ll write about sometimes, but it’ll come from pure enjoyment of new music.”
This means that any writers reading this article should reach out to Charles if they are interested in writing some music reviews. Musicians, or other industry professionals who want to learn more about Fieldhouse should visit fieldhouse-artist.com.
“You don’t need to be a big artist or anything to release music,” Charles closes. “It’s truly a passion. And I want to embrace that.”