A few weeks ago, a singer I know called me up to get my opinion on her plans to travel from where she lived in Canada all the way to Hollywood in order to personally pitch her music there to the music industry moguls. Failing that, anyone she could get to. She tried everything since she was 14 and now at the ripe old age of 23 she felt this was her last chance.
She asked me what I would advise her to do, how to get prepared, how to increase her chances, and so on. And, she added, wouldn’t I mind recommending her to some of my industry contacts?
So there we were. Me, based in Spain, being called by a Canadian pop singer who wanted some “ins” in the States, to sell her music to primarily Western-European sub-markets.
I don’t think I could count the number of similar inquiries I got over the past 30 plus years in the music business.
During my years at the ABC-syndicated show, Fame Games Radio, we helped to actively promote thousands of artists and dealt with dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of exactly such inquiries each week. In my years prior to that, working with record labels and production companies as a songwriter, producer, manager, etc, artists walked in daily begging for that “one chance” or at least some guidance. Many years before that, I too was one of those artists.
All told, then, nothing has changed. Artists continue looking for their breaks and they ask pretty much the same questions.
But in fact, things have changed dramatically since the “good ole days”.
The entire paradigm has changed.
For one thing, the artists’ desire to be “discovered” might have made some vague sense 40, 30 or even 10 years ago, but today such a passive role (i.e. waiting to be “discovered”) is the kiss of death for any realistic hopes of a music career. No matter how great you are. The Internet has changed everything. Not just for the musicians, but also for the labels.
Artists today have better and more powerful tools at their disposal to present, market and profit from their music than ever before. And it is no longer an “option” to do it yourself. It is now a necessary prerequisite and condition.
Artistic credibility is simply not enough anymore. You now also need to be credible as a “business” – as a social entity.
Many artists object to this. “I’m not a product,” they say. Of course you’re not. But you create a product and unless someone promotes it – your ambitions will not be fulfilled. And, you could say, you are what you create…!
But as with so many things in life, “promoting yourself” – working as a business – is much easier said than done if you don’t know precisely how it’s done. And in the meantime, you’ve also got to live, right?
Over the years, I have read many books and guides for aspiring professional musicians. While most of them contained plenty of pearls of wisdom and practical steps artists could follow in order to “succeed”, I don’t think I recall any that addressed the seemingly too mundane, but nevertheless most relevant question: “how are artists supposed to sustain themselves while working on their music?” Few ever addressed the musician’s daily means of sustenance.
In other words, you might know all the steps you’re supposed to take and you might be willing to put all the work, effort, ingenuity and funds into doing this – but the unanswered question remains: “where do you get the continuous, daily funds for all that?”
Most music business success strategies that I read glossed over this minor detail. They may suggest that you “sell your mp3’s” or “sell some merchandise” to support yourself, without acknowledging the simple fact that even if you do manage to sell a few units, it’s extremely unlikely that those sales will amount to enough to pay for your entire operation for the many months (years?) to follow! Certainly not if you’re just starting out. This is a glaring omission, if you ask me.
Some also suggest taking part in contests or submitting music to libraries or music placement ads, but, while it’s possible to make good incomes from all that, the odds in all those cases aren’t very encouraging, not to mention that this approach doesn’t amount to much of a “business plan.”
In other words they tell you to work like the devil on developing your music, networking and promoting it, without addressing the essential daily problem of how you’re going to be able to afford doing that indefinitely!
And so they leave this uncomfortable detail out of their entire strategy and approach. To my mind, this is a deadly mistake as far as you, the independent artist, are concerned. A mistake which all-but-guarantees that the artists who follow this kind of advice to the letter will fail, because by the time they get to the end of the course they will have starved to death!
So what do I mean by “failure” – and for that matter “success” – in the context of this book?
Quite apart from the obvious goal of doing what you love to the best of your ability, expanding your knowledge and horizons, learning more and more about music, becoming a better person – the narrowly defined “success” this book will strive to show you how to achieve, is bottom-line–financial.
In other words: how to set up your music career so that you don’t have to worry about day-to-day funding.
In this course I will thus refer to the “successful” independent artists as people who are able to live off their music.
The vast, overwhelming majority of bands and artists I’ve dealt with throughout my 30-plus-year career in the music business (on both sides of the aisle) have failed not only to achieve any level of “fame” – which, to my mind is the least relevant factor anyway – but much more importantly they failed to sustain themselves from their music and thus they were forced to “get a real job” long before they reached their creative peaks or fulfilled even a tiny part of their true potential. They may have had a great time for a while creating music, but they had to throw in the towel just as things were getting interesting.
So, to put it differently, even if you have a plan and the “best music”, you will still “fail” if you don’t have the fuel to get to your destination. And that fuel is: funds to continue.
Unless you’re getting funded by an enthusiastic third party, lack of funds to go on can be the ultimate show-stopper. And if you do have a backer – be it a small label, a wealthy patron or some crowd-funding initiative – you will eventually eat through all your funds and be back to square one with no further prospects in sight. Meanwhile, the process of “making it” can take… years.
Please don’t get me wrong. I’m definitely NOT “materialistic”. Money is not a goal for me at all. It’s nice, but it doesn’t drive me. And I know that many artists see money in much the same way. What matters most to us is a higher level of fulfillment. Not just artistically, but also in a greater philosophical sense.
This said, ignoring the mundane reality of simply not having funds to live can be the ultimate career-stopper. Before you know it, you’ll want to have a family. Are they going to be okay with you “playing” and not bringing home the bacon? Or will you, like 99.99% of all artists throw in the towel and get a real job in the end?
Even if you’re unattached, will you be fine with working for nickels and dimes in jobs that suck all your creative energies, all the while knowing that the artists who ultimately succeed do NOTHING BUT music? How do you compete with that? How long will mom and dad continue paying for your “playing?”
With all that in mind, this book is aimed at artists who want to be “successful” not only in the loftiest sense of the word, but particularly in the practical sense of living off their music.
I will therefore do my best to show you how to build yourself an online music BUSINESS using the best possible tools and strategies, and the least sensible and realistic amount of funding. I will show you income-generating strategies which are NOT LIMITED to music. As long as you learn how to set up residual incomes, it really shouldn’t matter to you whether it’s from some internet marketing systems or anything else. I’ll show you how to set up multiple revenue streams, again, not just from music but from “anything.” You’ll need to do a little work, for sure. But you’ll also be able to outsource a lot of it.
While this course is by no means a “guarantee” that you will succeed, it contains methods and techniques which have been tried and tested, and which work for those who apply them most meticulously. If you apply even just some of the advice in this course, you’ll eventually be able to reach 5-, 6- or even 7-figure levels of annual incomes. And that’s probably a very good recipe for living off your music for as long as you like and never having to worry about a 9-to-5!
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| Book 1 – Chapter 01 How This Course Is Organized |
Course Overview | Book 1 – Chapter 03 Why I Created This Course |
Book 1: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, Overview
