Artists usually make for terrible business peoples, and the truth is, you can get your music heard if you stop acting like an artist.
They are often more concerned with creating their art than they are with learning how to gain real exposure for it. They have no sense of schedule, no desire to follow a marketing plan, and usually without the funds allocated properly to promote their work with any real return of investment.
It is not the complete fault of the artist to overlook the business side of the music ‘business’, because decades of being told to let someone else do the promotional work for them has permeated the minds of the entire indie industry, and to be frank about it; these exceptional indie musicians simply do not know any better.
It was once said that when business peoples get together, they discuss art, and when artists get together, they discuss money. Although I think this is clever, I do think it might not be as close to the truth as one might think, or perhaps, it is not about whether they talk about these things, it is more about ‘how’ they talk about these things.
You see, I have been working with musicians for many years now, and one thing is a constant; musicians like to talk about having no money. I hear you; I am an artist myself, and I have pinched my pennies together with the best of them, but at some point, you must stop telling yourself that you do not have enough money to gain exposure for your music, and you must start seeing the potential you have to reach the world with your music right now, like, right now!
What you see is what you are going to most likely get. If you see your lack of funds and you see the world before the internet, the one where the larger labels held the keys to the audience you were trying to reach, if you see that world, then all those restrictions will apply to you. But, if you choose to see the potential of what you can do today with the resources you currently have, then you will start to see the business side of things more than automatically speaking the expected artists mantra of ‘but I don’t have enough money’.
A successful businessperson does not wake up and build an empire without thought. They do not put the name of their future company down on a piece of paper, doodle a quick logo, put it up on social media, and then wait for the world to discover it. They respect the calendar, the limited hours in a day to get shit done, they take inventory of the resources that they have, and they create a plan of attack. Essentially, they treat their business like a business that they want to see succeed.
They do not act like artists.
An artist sees the soul in their work, and often, they forget to see that they have created a product with financial potential. For many artists, connecting their work with money is both an exciting potential and a dirty word. They do not want to sully their good intentions with something as man-made and as corrupt as money. They draw a division line in proverbial sand that places them on one side and the cold-hearted-smiling-glad-hand-fake-corporate-whores on the other; and they refuse to cross over for fear of losing their identity. They look at social media as a burden rather than a promotional gift, and they suffer because of this.
Perhaps, not too long ago, there was a time when you had to choose a side, but that was before the internet revolution happened; your internet revolution.
Now, successful artists must channel their inner marketer to maintain a steady progression of growth in album streams and subscribers. They must learn to navigate the music business as we do, if they are to save both money and time that is.
That’s right, I just said that, I just told you to learn to promote your own music, and I founded a Music PR Firm!
I am an artist, and I am always a business person, and even this article carries the agenda of my company ‘to teach you how to promote yourself and break free from the expensive cycle of ‘Music PR Firm Dependency’, but this is not about that, so much as it is about you, and what you need to do right now to stop wasting both time and money trying to get heard, and to just go out there and get yourself on the map.
I am going to assume that you have professionally recorded your song or album, and that it is ready for the grand reveal. If you plan on sharing an unfinished song that does not meet true professional standards, then you are simply trying to build your empire on quicksand, and it won’t be long before it all goes under. If you are going to succeed in music then you are going to look at the best, take notes from the best, and follow the lead of the best. You are not going to act all artsy and try to use the ‘it’s ok-it’s indie music’ attitude to cover up your lack of professionalism, because there is a high standard to play at here, and anyone casually walking into the musical landscape is going to get eaten alive.
A businessperson knows the realistic outcome of the goal they are chasing.
They do not say ‘I want to be a millionaire!’ and then go chase a million dollars. They focus on a much smaller goal, but that goal is a focused one, and one that has definite importance to the larger picture. Once again, a million dollars is not the usual larger picture. Instead, they grind out daily goals that eventually add up to the something much bigger, and that powerful daily action, when taken seriously by an artist, can prove to be the difference between worldwide exposure and absolute obscurity.
A businessperson will aim to build the store, an artist will strengthen their branding. A businessperson will focus on landing one client and then another, while an artist should be focused on gaining another listener and then another after that. Neither businessperson or artist should be wasting time trying to capture a million clients or a million listeners, all at once, because that is the surefire way to fail every single time. Both the businessperson and the artist share an incredible amount of daily ritualistic parallels to maintain a positive return on their investments. Those investments being money, effort, and time.
So, you get it now, you must see what I am trying to tell you, and that is that you must start developing a better respect for your own ability to get your music noticed, and you must start your own daily rituals to achieve the goals you are setting for your music. You must start to appreciate the working side of the music industry, and what this means is that starting RIGHT NOW, you are going to know what your next week of self-promotion looks like.
You are going to download a calendar on your phone, download the most current social media posting chart for your platform, and you are going to fill it up with the exact times and days that you are going to post new content.
You are going to know what content you will be posting, and you are going to learn about proper social media etiquette.
You will start to respect the process of daily outreach, and you will stop looking at the million potential fans, and instead, you are going to see the importance of focusing on simply landing the next one.
You are going to embrace your inner businessperson and stop thinking that you need to pay a company to do all the heavy lifting for you, because as an artist with a product, you need to embrace being an entrepreneur completely (unless you have money to burn and you really don’t have time to wear the marketer hat).
If you do this, if you look at learning how to promote your own music in the right light, then you will empower yourself to an exciting level that will have you pumped about creating new social media content on a regular basis. You will also develop a powerful sense of accomplishment that will keep you focused on the goal of reaching more people with your music, and you will do this without draining every dollar out of your account.