TV talent contests, manufactured bands and artists who sing others’ songs: welcome to the 21st century music business.
But there are refreshing alternatives... a young man strumming his guitar in his budget home studio.
Natalie Jones meets singer, songwriter, producer and mixer Isaac Birchall, who promises that 2011 will be 'his year'.
A FORMER pupil at Ysgol Brynhyfryd, 22 year-old Isaac, lives with his parents in Ruthin, his bedroom - a converted home studio.
Coming from a close knit family, Isaac's talent and his dream of a music careers has always been met with much support.
"I currently work as a bar tender at a local pub to bring enough money in to pay the bills while I concentrate on the music," said Isaac.
"I've made my mind up that this year is going to be my year where the music is concerned, getting myself heard and I'm so glad of my family and friend's support where that's concerned."
Isaac describes himself as a 'one man band', a singer/songwriter, who also records, mixes, masters and produces all of my material from his home studio.
His main instrument of choice - the guitar.
"I can play a little bit of piano, a little bit of drums and also recently I've been experimenting and getting into a lot more electronic sounds, although nothing in this world beats the sound of a real guitar as far as I'm concerned," he said.
Isaac has been playing and singing for as long as he can remember, seriously taking on the guitar from the age of seven.
"I have a very vivid imagination, where lyrics and ideas/concepts are concerned, and I'm very lucky that I can get those ideas down," he said.
"Even when I imagine a piece of music or a sound in my head, I will spend hours and hours, sometimes days, making sure that I get what I record to sound exactly how I feel it.
"When I sing and play guitar, they cease to become my instruments, but more of an extension of myself and an outlet for my imagination.
"Most, if not all of my lyrics have much deeper and mysterious meanings than they may appear to have on the surface, which often leads people to make their own interpretations and their own meanings out of my songs, and that's a beautiful thing I think," he added.
Isaac's sound is largely guitar and vocal oriented, but he also engages with 'ambient and deep music'.
"The smallest of sounds can make the biggest of differences to the way a song feels on record," he said.
"My guitar playing is very rhythmic, although I do put solo's and a lot of big sounding lead parts in, where it fits.
"I'll never force something into a song that shouldn't be there.
"My voice is very dynamic, I don't have a massive vocal range, but as a friend of mine who does the live sound for an open mic night I play at regularly says, it play's hell with the levels."
Issac's voice can go from very quiet to very loud in an instant, and it often changes depending on how he feels about a piece he's playing.
"My voice is anything but commercial, it's quite raspy and almost shouty on occasion, and rather than just sing, I put every ounce of myself and my very soul into my voice," he said.
During his teen years, Isaac's choice of music was rock and metal, which he found 'intoxicating' to perform.
But he soon found his taste in music changing.
"Within two or three years I began listening to a lot more acoustic music, chilled out and ambient, and I absolutely fell in love, so I got myself an Acoustic guitar and I found my forte, my instrument of choice, and it's really spiralled since then," he said.
"I've come to find a real love and appreciation for being alone on stage with just my guitar as backing, I find it amazing the dynamics I seem to get from just using my voice and six strings - it's raw and it's beautiful, and I've been told it's quite moving at times."
Isaac got his first real taste of performing over three years ago, where he played to an audience of around 30.
"It was the most amazing feeling in the world, a feeling that has happened almost every single gig I've done since, I find myself craving it, it's magical," he said.
But, not every gig was the same and Isaac soon realised that things do not always run so smoothly.
"I was playing at a club in Deeside and was due to do a set with my backing tracks," he said.
"Around five minutes before I was due on stage, my MP3 player (with the backing tracks on it) decided to give up the ghost, and the jack on my acoustic guitar broke.
"After what seemed like the quickest removal of my strings to fish out the wires and bodge them together, before putting the strings back on and tuning up, I got up on stage, essentially with 45 minutes to fill and the entire set I'd practiced was gone.
"So, I decided to go it alone, with just my guitar and me, interpreted the songs I'd prepared the best I could for a solely acoustic performance, there were a few mistakes here and there but the reaction I got was phenomenal.
"That is the moment I decided to start playing most of my gigs purely acoustic, it was such a rush, going to the gig feeling almost naked in a way, stripped of my backing tracks and practice," he added.
Isaac has a lot in the pipeline from play gigs, to getting some local radio airplay, and even a video shoot: "Although I'm still trying to figure out which song to use for a video!"
"This year is the year I push hard to work toward that goal - I honestly and truly can't do anything else, I have to do this," he added.