You should by now know that it’s not easy to make it in music. There’s no doubt that you’ve got to put the work in to succeed as an independent musician, and anyone not willing to do that may as well give up now. Some people spend years working hard before they start to see some sort of decent profit, some people put in that time but never get to that stage at all.

So does working hard mean you’ll end up succeeding in music? The simple answer is no, as you can see it doesn’t. What’s important however is you understand why working hard alone doesn’t mean your music career will be a success, and what you can do to increase your chances of succeeding.

Here’s how it goes for a lot of people: They embark on their music career, hoping that one day their music will take them far enough to earn a full time living and make them famous. They write a few lyrics, make a few songs and put them online, and maybe even turn up to the odd open mike night and perform. Then they do all this again. And again. And… Again. At one point, they stop and wonder why their music career is moving extremely slowly, if at all. Maybe they’re not putting enough work in? So they decide to up their game (If they haven’t quit by then) and focus a lot more on being everywhere. They up the amount of time they spend online networking with fans, they try and get more local shows, and they try and talk to everyone they can about how good their music is. So now they’re running around like a headless chicken, trying to get as much done as possible. But wait, how much are they really getting done? Yes they’re working really hard, but how smart are they actually working?

There’s no point entering the music game and swinging round wildly till you hit something, why not instead look at what you want to hit, work out how you’re going to hit it, take aim, and then whack it with one knock out blow? That’ll make a lot more sense…

Work Smart When You’re An Independent Musician, Not Hard

“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win”. Quote by Sun-tzu, a Chinese general & military strategist (400BC).

Yer, that’s what I said mate…

The point is this; Fighting a battle blindly is not ideal. So if you’ve got a chance to see before your battle begins, there’s no reason to not do so. You want to be able to know what you’re going to do and then go out and do it. Instead of just going to the studio, making as many songs as possible and then giving them all out for free, why not stop and ask why you’re doing that? And how it’ll help you in your music career? But don’t just take a guess as to why and how it’ll help, make sure you’ve got proof to back it up! Study the game. You want to see who’s doing well, and why they’re achieving success. Chances are it won’t be just because they’ve got talent, there’ll also be business elements that come into play. So see what’s working for them, and try and recreate your findings so you can make your music just as successful.

One thing I’ve noticed, is a lot of people don’t leverage the promotional opportunities they have available to them. They could easily get someone else or a service to reach a whole load of people for them, yet instead they choose to reach potential fans one by one manually. Of course, this takes a long time. I’m not going to go into how to leverage your music career right now, as I’ve got a whole other topic coming on that very soon. What I will say however is this: What’s the point of working hard when you can get someone else to work hard for you?

Have a think of how you can get other people to work hard for your music career (And let us know your thoughts in the comments below), and I’ll let you know my ideas in a topic very soon. To your success.

Getting your music career to take off can be a timely process. You have to work your way up through the ranks, proving yourself to possess the skills and talent required to be a success along the way. Most people don’t get signed by a major record label as soon as they post their first video on YouTube, and it can often be a good while till you start getting the recognition and sales you deserve. Because of this, it’s essential you don’t make that process any slower then it has to be. Working efficiently will mean you achieve your goals a lot quicker, and often save money on the way. Here are five tips that will allow you to be more efficient in your independent music career.

1. Make Best Use Of Recording Studio Time

This is very important. When it comes to recording studios, many people use bad practices. I’ve seen people hire a studio for a day, spend most of the day writing lyrics and playing on the studio’s game console / snooker table, then using the last 1/5th of the session to actually record their music. This I can understand if you’re under a major record label with a limitless budget who won’t take this studio time out of your album sales (I don’t think that’ll ever happen?), but for anyone else this is a big waste of time and money!

These studios have various entertainment in their buildings as they WANT you to waste time. The more time you waste, the more you’ll be going back to their studio and the more money they’ll make. They’re a business, their aim is to make money… FROM YOU! Counteract this by writing and practising all your lyrics at home. That way, once you go into the studio all you’ll need to do is record. After all, that’s what a recording studio should be for. Anything else apart from the recording equipment is a distraction, so don’t get tricked into lining someone else’s pocket.

2. Constantly Analyse Your Music Career

As you do things, you should constantly be looking at what works and what doesn’t. Doing this will allow you to pick out things that are worth doing and those that aren’t. When things don’t work, you should ask yourself why they don’t work and if there’s anything you can do to potentially make them work. When things do work, try and find out why they work and see if you can do it on a bigger scale.

Many musicians don’t do this, and end up wasting valuable time on things that aren’t working. Because they’ve never stopped to measure the results they’re receiving, they don’t realise what they’re doing is ineffective so carry on along the wrong path.

Actively learning from your experiences and implementing what you learn is a great way to streamline your efforts and help you reach your goal a lot quicker.

3. Make A Plan For Your Music Career

Running on auto pilot and doing things as they come up is a bad habit of many independent musicians. Not having a plan can often lead to a lack of focus and not really knowing what to do. For example, many people have the goal of doing as many shows as possible, but don’t have a plan of how they’re going to get these shows and by when. You need to know how you’re going to do something so you can systematically put it into practice (Randomly waiting for shows to appear isn’t a very good strategy). You also need to know by when so you’ve got a end date. If you don’t have a end date you could be working to achieve one aim for years before you realise it’s not working. At least if you set a date you can stop and reflect on whether or not something is working and adapt accordingly.

It’s often wise to set S.M.A.R.T aims. S.M.A.R.T stands of Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timed. You want to make yourself specific goals that can be measured and will be achievable. For example, you may say you want to do ten shows by the end of the year. This is specifically what you want to do, it can be measured with numbers, and it should be achievable. On top of this it’s realistic and it has a time limit.

Making a plan for your music career with S.M.A.R.T steps will allow you to have direction rather then just swinging out and hoping for the best. Then, along with analysis, you can alter and refine your plans to you find something that works for you.

4. Use Automated Software To Speed Up Promotion

Promoting your music is essential, as if you don’t let people know your music exists no one’s going to buy it. Having said that, not everyone’s cut out for promoting. They may not like the process, or may simply feel like it’s too time consuming. While it may not be an option for promoting to people at shows and the like, you can get a lot of online promotion done for you automatically while you work on other things. At Independent Music Advice for example, we use Tweet Adder and MailChimp (Which is free up to 500 subscribers). Tweet Adder automatically adds people to our twitter account, messages them, and updates our twitter status to a schedule we specify. These twitter users then check out our website and often sign up and / or become regular readers. MailChimp automatically sends our subscribers pre written messages every week, effectively building a relationship with our reader on auto pilot. The amount of time these tools have saved has been extremely valuable, and will allow you more time to make your music and do anything else you need to do.

5. Don’t Over Network And Learn Which Music Contacts To Trust

I’m sure people have told you before about the importance of networking, and this is true. You can’t do everything by yourself, and you need links to help you achieve things you may not be able to do by yourself. What people don’t often say though is you should pick the people you network with very carefully. There are too many non-serious people in the music industry, and many will end up slowing you down. A good link is someone who can help speed up your music career, not slow it down and waste all your phone credit.

You need to look at how genuine someone is when you’re first getting to know them. Many people over hype what they’ve done or what they can do for you, so the first sign of a lie and you should be very wary.

You also want to avoid people who you constantly have to chase up. If you ring them and they’re always ignoring their phone, in “a meeting”, or tells you to call them back later (And later never comes), stop trying to contact them and forget about them. If they can really help you and they want to they’ll contact you back.

When you’re networking there will be many people who will waste your time. The key is minimising the time they waste in your search for good music industry contacts, and holding on to the good contacts you find.

All these five steps will lead to a more efficient music career, saving you valuable time and money. If you know of any other ways to make your career more efficient, please let us know in the comments.

Like many musicians, I’m sure at some point you’ve dreamed about making it big. To have unlimited adoring fans, enough money to live the life you’ve always wanted, and to carry on doing what you enjoy; making the music you love! This is a natural dream for all starting out musicians, though it’s not always as easy as that…

In all honesty, only a very small percentage of people make a worthwhile wage from their music. The majority of musicians unfortunately don’t break even, spending money pressing up CDs that don’t end up selling. I’m not saying that their CDs aren’t worth buying (Although some of them probably aren’t), a lot of people just don’t know what to do once they have their music on the shelves. Humans aren’t naturally sales people after all…

If you learn how to sell, are self dependent and willing to put some elbow grease in however, it’s perfectly feasible to earn a full time living from your music. I believe it’s possible for a talented musician with certain qualities (A willingness to learn how the business works, a marketable talent / image / personality, enough time to put the work in) to earn anything from 20k per year upwards.

Do You Think You Can Achieve This?

I’m going to give you a hypothetical situation, and I want you to tell me how achievable you personally think this is for your music:

Assuming 20k a year is enough to live off, via a combination of single and album sales, performing shows and selling merchandise, you can earn a full time living. Here’s the basic math:

• Let’s say in one year you sell 2000 copies of your album as digital downloads via your website at £8 a pop. That’s £16,000.
• You also sell 2000 singles via the same method at £1 per time making another £2,000.
• On top of that you do shows and sell merchandise / you music, as well as hard copies of your CD. and earn money from shows totaling £3,000.

Within the year, that’s £21,000.

Of course, there will be expenses. Minus studio costs of say £500 (25 hours at £20 per hour, which should be more then enough to record an album as well as promotional songs and singles) and other expenses such as website hosting and tools to set you up selling your music online (We’ll say another £500 to cover everything, although this should be a lot less) and you’re looking at a £20,000 profit for the year.

Of course this is a very simplified calculation and there are a lot of other factors you have to take into account such as added expenses for marketing (Though it is possible to get this largely done for free if you know how).You may also focus more on monetizing you music in other ways, but I’m sure you get the idea I’m trying to make.

So now let me ask you, how realistic do you think selling 4000 singles and albums a year is? Or in other words, 11 single and albums a day? It doesn’t sound so hard when you put it like that does it… And bare in mind, if you sell a bulk of that in your album launch month (Say 1500 copies in the first month) you’ve already made the majority of money you need to make for the year!

So what do YOU think, do you think you could get to the stage where you sell 11 pieces of music a day? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.