IndieMusicMarketer.com - Music Business Promotion & Marketing Blog

How to Start Your Music Career

Written by Josiah Redding

Tuesday, 29 May 2007

A lot of people out there probably have tremendous musical talent, and want to make a career out of this talent, but they have no idea where to start on their path toward a music career. This article is a crash course in what you need to know to get started on that path. INTRODUCTION
A lot of people out there probably have tremendous musical talent, and want to make a career out of this talent, but they have no idea where to start on their path toward a music career. This article is a crash course in what you need to know to get started on that path.

WHAT YOU'RE GETTING YOURSELF INTO
The purpose of this section is to discourage you from even trying to start a music career. If you get past this section of the article, then we'll go further, but I encourage you to actually read this section to kind of give yourself a reality check before proceeding. It may save you and your loved ones a lot of trouble and heartache down the road.

First, this business is very hard on a person physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally, and for the overwhelming majority of people in this business, it doesn't turn out to be worth it financially or otherwise. When people think about the life of a recording artist, they think about what they see on the TV and hear on the radio, which is a very exaggerated version of the life of even the less than 1% of musicians who hit it big and make it onto those mediums. People think of being in the music business, they see huge stadiums full of screaming fans calling their name, stretch limos and cameras flashing left and right, record companies cutting them checks for millions of dollars, and their face plastered all over magazines and newspapers.

This is not even the case for people who are at the top.

Sure, they make flashy appearances here and there where the media and paparazzi are all over them, but they still live their lives pretty much the same as anyone else, just with a lot higher stress, fatigue, separation from family, opportunity for embarrassment, sore joints and muscles, etc.

For the next several years after getting into the industry, you'll probably find yourself playing for crowds of next to nobody and making next to nothing in income.

You'll be playing in bad venues with bad people and bad musicians. It will not be flashy, glamorous, or even fun most of the time. It will be hard, grueling, sweaty, nasty work.

As a new musician, you'll also have to wear a lot of hats, including booking agent (cold calling people and asking them to book you and pay you for it), promoter (actually bringing people to your shows), retail promoter (getting store owners to stock your CD), radio promoter (getting college radio to play your CD), sound tech (keeping your live rig running and sounding good), roadie (carrying tons of equipment around), press agent (writing press releases, calling, mailing, emailing, faxing), etc. Unless, of course, you already have a good several hundred thousand dollars to sink into this and hire others to do it for you.

So all in all, in this business, especially with no prior-established following or fanbase, is a lot of hard work and trouble for very little money (if any). You should consider this long and hard before you decide to quit college or quit your job or something.

OPTIONS IN THE MUSIC RECORDING/PERFORMANCE INDUSTRY
When you're going into the music industry, there are a couple of options you have available to you as far as how you pursue it. There are benefits and drawbacks to each, so lets take a closer look:

1. The Solo Artist
You can go into the battle solo and try to establish a following of people who love you for your music and your individual personality. The advantage is, when booking shows, you don't have to charge as much to make the same amount of profit. If you book a show for $1000 as a soloist, you personally get the whole amount rather than whatever is left over after splitting it among your band members). Also, you get to make all your decisions personally, and don't have to worry about band members quitting, not being available for a show, etc.

The drawback is you only have your own resources to draw on. You have to have the connections, you have to call people, you have to write the music, you have to setup and tear down after a show, you have to pay studio musicians to make your recordings, etc. Also, you have to personally appeal to all of your fans. In a band, each member will have different personalities, looks, backgrounds, etc., which may appeal to different groups of people, therefore increasing your potential target market. I recommend the soloist option only if your personality is very outgoing, because you'll be responsible for "selling" your act to fans, venues, the industry, etc.

2. The Band
If you form a band, you'll have a new set of problems to deal with, such as personality conflicts, but there are also some advantages. Number one, each band member has different talents to offer, and also knows a whole different network of people who may be able to help you succeed, whether by being in the music industry or simply by adding more people to attend your concerts and buy your music.

For instance, if one of your band members is in high school and another in college, that may add two strong possibilities as far as quality places you may be able to perform to larger numbers of people.

Also, like I mentioned before, having multiple people with different looks, personalities, backgrounds, ethnicities, etc., will add a broader appeal to your act, and may prove beneficial in the long run as well. In a band, it's almost always good to have a mixture of male/female, black/white/other, christian/other, etc., simply as good marketing technique. This kind of "custom-tailoring" a band may seem fake or otherwise, but in the end your band needs to be a highly-marketable package if you want to sell your music to fans and the industry.

FIRST THINGS FIRST
Okay, now that we've gotten the basics out of the way, let's go back to the basics. You need to understand the elements of a successful music career. They are:

Quality Songs
Vocal & Instrumental Talent
A Marketable "Package"
Financial Backing (Money)
Hard Work
Connections

Let's look at these one-by-one:

1. Quality Songs
You can't be a musician without songs. The better the songs, the better your career can be. It starts and ends with the song, otherwise they wouldn't call it the MUSIC business. You'll never have any fans, you'll never get any radio play, and you'll never make any serious amount of money unless you have good songs.

2. Vocal & Instrumental Talent
Sure, you can probably make a recording, get booked at a few places, and maybe even get a little popular without having musical talent. But you'll never attain success unless you have at least one of either vocal or instrumental talent. If you lack in one of those areas, either work on that for a while, or join a band where someone else can handle the job you're not good at.

3. A Marketable Package
Even if you have good songs and are overflowing with talent, you can't really make any money until you can effectively MARKET your products (i.e., your live show, your CD, your merchandise, etc.) The more marketable your overall package (i.e., your band/solo act's image, looks, personality, sound, etc.) the more easily you can effectively market your products. And that's the bottom line: selling massive amounts of products to massive amounts of people. If you can't do that, you can't make any money in this business, and you should probably do something else with your life rather than continue to beat your head against the wall.

4. Financial Backing
In layman's terms, you need a lot of money. A music career is expensive — a band is especially expensive to operate. Travel, lodging, recording, pressing, booking, retail promotion, radio promotion, concert promotion, renting venues, renting buses or vans, buying new instruments, maintaining sound equipment — it is all very, very expensive. Just like any business venture, you need start-up capital. Sure, you can probably work your way up little by litte, but it will take a very long time unless you have some hard currency here and there. Money talks. Money gets things done. Once you have somewhat of a following, or at least a large tour booked, you may be able to obtain sponsorships if you can convince companies that you will be effective advertising for them. This can help later on, but is usually not an option when you're first starting out.

5. Hard Work
This is something you'd better be prepared for. I talked about it earlier, so I'm not going to re-hash everything, but suffice it to say that this is likely to be the hardest job you've ever had, and probably the worst-paying too — at least for the next couple of years.

6. Connections
After all is said and done, it really, really helps to know people who can take you to the next step in your career. My band, THE REDDING BROTHERS, worked for 2 years by ourselves, and we were doing okay, but then we ran into the person who is currently our manager, and in 3 months, we went from playing in small coffeeshops for $150 to playing a 300 seat theater in our hometown for $2000. Within 12 months we outgrew that theater and moved on to play a 750 seat theater at our capital city's Civic Center. And all these people were there to see us, not some bigger act we were opening for. Whether they be energetic people who just believe in your project, or even industry insiders who can get your music into the right hands, it really can be invaluable to have other resources outside your act to help you along the way.

Once you have each of these 6 elements focused on helping you get where you want to be, you can make large strides in your career in a lot less time.

PLAYING YOUR FIRST GIG
It's vitally important to start developing a good stage presence as early as possible. If you've been on stage performing since you were 2, you probably don't have to worry about this. But there are many would-be musicians who have terrible stage fright. Industry insiders can tell the difference between a "wannabe" performer and a seasoned stage act in a matter of moments. And crowds know the difference too, subconciously.

I recommend getting out and playing the local talent shows, open mics — heck, even karaoke nights — as soon as possible. Get comfortable being on stage! It's going to be your new home, after all. Watch videos of how performers hold themselves, walk, move and interact with the audience. Each time you do another performance, put those things that you notice into practice. You'll get better each time. And remember: they say 1 live performance teaches you more than 10 private practice sessions, so don't hesitate to get out perform.

While you're out touring, you'll want to keep track of anyone who seems interested in you and your music. Read my article on running a successful mailing list here.

RECORDING YOUR FIRST DEMO OR ALBUM
These days, the lines are greying as far as what the "standard format" to follow is. Used to be, it was the Single. Then it was the LP (long-play, 10-12 tracks). Now there's iTunes, etc., where people just download whatever song they like the best. A lot of smaller acts are now simply releasing EPs (extended-plays, 5-7 tracks). EPs may be the best thing to start out with, depending on your genre and what your goals with the release are. If you're doing a full-on professional radio and retail marketing campaign, then you'll definitely want an LP. But if you're mainly going to sell it at your concerts, online, and maybe the occasional mom-and-pop record/book store, then an EP is fine.

You also need to choose whether or not you'll be paying for studio time, or buying your own studio equipment so you can take your time (or better yet, use a friend's home recording studio for free!) These days, you can acquire the basic tools to record your music for around $3500, depending on whether or not you already have a sufficient computer system. Here's a standard setup:

Apple iMac computer (around $1000)
Mark of the Unicorn Firewire 896 HD Audio Interface (around $900)
Logic Pro recording software (around $1000)
Blue Bird condenser microphone (around $500)

You can convert your office into a mini project studio with the above equipment. But in order to actually produce anything with this setup, you'll probably have to devote AT LEAST several weeks to studying the user guides, internet resources, and whatever books the public library might have on the subjects, to learn how everything works. If you already know how to use the software and the system, this may be the best way for you to record, because paying for studio and an engineer's time can definitely end up being as much or more than this, depending on the studio, how many songs you do and how prepared you are when you go in.

Once you've finished the recordings, you'll need to replicate your album on CD. NOTE: There's a difference between DUPLICATION and REPLICATION. Replication is how professional albums are made, but it can only be done in larger runs of 1000 copies or more, usually. Duplication is how your CD burner in your home computer makes CDs, and can usually be done in runs of as low as 25 discs, depending on what the company is willing to do. If you're not looking for retail and radio marketing, then duplication is usually all you need. But for more professional releases, you'll need replication. Look into services from companies like DiscMakers.com, OasisCD.com, NationwideDisc.com, DiskFaktory.com (for duplication), and others (a simple Google search will result in a lot of replication and duplication company options).

Another note: a lot of services will give you a free UPC barcode if you replicate your disc with them. You need a UPC number and barcode for your CD to be sold in retail outlets. CDBaby.com, an online independent CD store, will also sell you a barcode for $20 if you list your CD in their store for $30. CDBaby is an AWESOME resource for independent musicians, which will allow you to sell CDs online, and also sell downloads through sites like iTunes, eMusic, etc. They're also very easy to work with, unlike some other similar services. I highly recommend CDBaby to everyone.

YOUR BIG CD RELEASE PARTY
This is the big day! Your CD is ready to be released to your friends and family, and any fans you've gained so far. The best thing to do is plan it far in advance. You'll either need to ask a local venue to let you host your release party there (they probably won't mind as long as it will bring them more business), or you'll need to rent something like a church, Elk's lodge, Moose Lodge, American Legion, Movie Theater, School Theater, etc. Fees for these types of places can range widely from as little as $50-$150 to well over $800-$1000 and up. You need to operate this like a business and determine whether or not you'll make a good profit when the night it through.

You'll also need to determine if you'll be selling tickets, charging at the door, or just bringing people for free so there'll be more people to buy your CD. There are different situations when different setups work best. I suggest that when you're starting out, you should leave the door free, unless the venue owner requires a door fee.

As far as promotion, I think it's usually best to trickle the word out early on, while you're still recording, and get your friends and family talking to their friends about what you're doing. Then, make an official announcement on your Myspace or Facebook page, blast a bulletin or an email to all your fans, friends and relatives, text message everybody you know and remind them. In everything, be sure to include the details of who, what, when, where, why, and how much. Also, offer something for free — such as a button or accessory — just for coming, or just for buying the CD.

When the day comes, do a short performance of some of the better songs on your release, maybe invite a couple of your musician friends to play before and after you, and then move through the crowd, talk to people, make friends, thank them for coming, get them on your mailing list, and sell them your CDs.

You're well on your way to becoming a professional musician!

WHAT YOU SHOULD READ NEXT:
• Successful Mailing List Management