Once you've abandoned the "must get signed" mindset, the next obstacle is Indie Ethics - another subject on which the how-to books stay strangely silent. Indie Ethics are a vague code of practice that every band is expected to follow. Thou Shalt Not Collaborate With The Man. Thou Shalt Not Mime On Television. Thou Shalt Not Sell Records. That sort of thing. The reason the concept is so popular is because it gives people an opportunity to slag off your band for "selling out" - it sounds so much better than telling the truth, which is that the person who's slagging you doesn't like your haircut. The concept of indie ethics is bollocks, of course, but it doesn't stop bands from agonising over it.

The only way to be in a band without compromising is to stay in your bedsit. If you play a gig for money, you're working for The Man - you're only there to help the venue sell beer. If you play a Tennent's Live venue you're helping a drinks corporation target that oh-so-lucrative twentysomething market. Appear in the NME and you're helping its parent company, IPC, sell advertising (and stomp on journalists' rights, but that's another story). When you post "sell out!" messages to a music board, you're probably helping Server.com sell adverts. Everything you do is a compromise.

The music business is a business - if you don't want to be part of it, then don't play gigs, don't make records, and don't bore everybody else with your elitist nonsense. Personally I'd be willing to pull live badgers out of my arse on the National Lottery Show if I thought it would result in more people hearing Kasino's music.

Worrying about whether you've sold out or not is a waste of valuable drinking time.

Sheer genius

Your genius may be obvious to you and your band, but it might not be obvious to anybody else. If you want people to like you, you need to work at it. Some people will never like you. That's not a flaw on their part; nor is it a flaw on yours. Accept it, get over it, and spend your time trying to find people who will be more receptive. For indie bands, that means four types of people: fanzines, publications, the broadcast media and Web sites.

The people who write fanzines (or E-Zines, the online equivalent) are quite possibly insane. They don't get paid, they get sod-all respect, yet they devote massive amounts of time and effort to reviewing gigs, interviewing bands and listening to awful, awful demo tapes. Being reviewed in a fanzine gives you two benefits: people who love music get to hear about you (most fanzines are read by bands, gig-goers, journalists and so on), and if it's a good review you can quote it in your biography or press releases. Of course, there's a risk too: if a fanzine writer doesn't like you, expect a demolition job. These are usually funny, so don't take it personally. There's no such thing as bad publicity.

People tend to underestimate local newspapers, which is a shame. Some of the nicest people we know work for local rags, and they're usually very enthusiastic about music (and desperately underpaid). Before you slag off their coverage of live music in your area, bear in mind that it's very difficult to persuade editors to cover local bands at all - readers generally prefer to read recycled press releases about Britney Spears and boy bands. Getting any local music in the local rag is a considerable achievement, so help them out: keep them up to date with what you're doing, and always think of an angle. Why should the paper write about your band? The better the angle, the better the coverage.