ON A recent day, Helen Sildna was sifting through applications, looking at products, business plans and strategies for market expansion. This may be business as usual for investment managers, but the applicants were artists, not companies. Ms Sildna, the founder and chief executive of Tallinn Music Week, is convinced that musical acts need to operate like start-ups, attracting investors and creating business plans. “Estonia has a long history of music-making and state support for classical music, but we didn’t have a tradition of musical entrepreneurship,” says Ms Sildna, a 37-year-old music promoter who launched the festival in 2009. “With the Tallinn Music Week, we wanted to kick-start an artistic entrepreneurship culture. We felt that the success of Estonian music was going to be dependent on artists acting like self-sufficient companies.”

During the one-week festival, which takes place in March and April each year, bands and solo artists perform (free of charge), exchange ideas with each other—and hone their business skills by negotiating with promoters, investors and other potential partners. The festival is essentially a boot camp for musical start-ups. "The artists know that you have to take financial risk,” Ms Sildna says. They have to learn to “find investments and develop efficient teams containing all sorts of expertise from finance to digital media and marketing.”

For the previous Tallinn Music Week Ms Sildna received around 1,000 applications, of which 250—representing 35 countries—were selected. The application round for 2017 runs until the end of November. "It's easier to start on your own because you're in charge of your own career," says Andres Kõpper, an Estonian electro-pop artist performing under the name NOËP. "In Estonia that's the way artists work now. You don't stand around waiting for a magic hand to help you." Mr Kõpper signed a record contract with Sony, after they discovered his music on Spotify. The young artist had, in essence, already done the heavy lifting by building his own audience.

Given that major record labels rarely visit Estonia, pursuing the start-up route makes sense for the country’s artists. Indeed, Estonia is becoming a start-up pioneer in music in much the same way that it has become a nation of tech start-ups. (There is one for every 3,700 citizens.) It’s telling that the Tallinn Music Week’s first sponsor was Skype, Estonia’s most famous tech firm, which still has its headquarters in Tallinn. "As suitable for a start-up with a free product, which we were, it was never about pumping loads of cash into paid advertising," recalls Sten Tamkivi, in charge of Skype's Estonian operations at the time. "Instead, we got a hundred Skypers to join the events and made Skype-based communication available for the conference for free." Start-ups sponsoring other start-ups with in-kind goods reflects Estonia’s creative and flexible approach to business.

Two years ago, this unconventional boot camp was joined by the music industry development platform Music Estonia. The organisation—supported by 31 Estonian music promoters, management companies and local labels, and part-funded by the Estonian government and the EU—is a music incubator that helps artists and music-related start-ups to hone their skills in areas including online store operation, streaming services, apps and innovative publishing services. Music Estonia hopes this will allow Estonian acts to go international without the support of a major label. Some 30 artists are currently working with the organisation.

Trad.Attack, a folk band that releases its own music (and is another Tallinn Music Week alumnus), got itself off the ground by investing their own money, which they spent on Facebook content. "That worked both for us and for the fans," explains singer Sandra Sillamaa. "They liked that [the content] was a top product in every way with good photos and good videos." When the band earned money from concerts, they reinvested it into their production. And they signed up sponsors who received CDs and concert tickets in exchange for goods like insurance and airline tickets. Last month, Trad.Attack successfully applied for funding: not from the culture ministry but from Enterprise Estonia, a business promotion agency.

Waiting to be signed by a major label may no longer be a good idea for artists anywhere. According to a recent survey by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the key 13-to-25 demographic only buys 14% of all CDs sold, while music lovers aged 36 and over buy 58%. The younger demographic accounts for 41% of all music ripping and downloading, while the much larger 36-and-over group only accounts for 40% of that activity. Ms Sildna argues that music fans’ changing buying habits have created more opportunities for enterprising artists. “Today investment and competent teams can be found in innovative formats. There is no such thing as the classic music industry route anymore.”