Think of your music activity as a company (though you don’t have to formally register it until you actually start pulling in regular and reliable incomes.) It has a “creative” department (let’s call it “R&D” – research and development), and a “business” side – call it “management”.
On the creative side, “someone” does the songwriting, “someone” does the performances (playing instruments, singing, programming), “someone” else does the mixing and production. And “someone” does the market research and A&R. Another “someone” is looking after licensing or product placement, and so on.
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On the management side, “someone” is responsible for the daily running of the “office”, maintaining your fan interest, and someone else is responsible for the “marketing” of your “product”. Yet another “someone” is looking after ways to bring in the ongoing funds for your operation to keep everything running smoothly. Someone else still does the accounts. And so on and on.
In most cases, the indie artist (you) steps into the shoes of all those “someones”. Needless to say, before long things start falling by the wayside, not only because the artist becomes overwhelmed, but also because he/she doesn’t know enough about doing those things WELL. And in the meantime the money just keeps flowing OUT rather than IN.
These and many other functions within your music business represent areas of expertise which people build entire careers on. It would be utterly unreasonable to expect any single person – no matter how experienced – to know how to perform EACH of these tasks with equal expertise – and not get burned out. But without ALL of those tasks being performed WELL, there really is no music business and NO music career for you…!
So how do you deal with this dilemma? This is where most indie artists throw in the towel and decide that they will either just “wing it” or await the inevitable “discovery”.
And yet the next step is simple and logical: understand WHAT you need to get done in your business, and then plan HOW you’re going to get it done.
In order to do that, you’ll need to have a reasonable understanding of “all” the things you’ll need to accomplish, and then enough of an organizational mind to either (a) organize it all yourself, or (b) get someone to organize it for you. But in both cases, YOU still need to know what exactly needs to be organized. You are, after all, the key figure in your business, so you must know everything that goes on in it!
This entire course describes all the various things you – and/or someone you appoint – will have to know how to do in order to build an independent (music) business that will support you for as long as you like.
Before we finally dive into the individual aspects of it all, let’s now have a birds-eye overview.
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| Book 1 – Chapter 11 What Work? |
Course Overview | Book 1 – Chapter 13 The Broad Plan |
Book 1: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, Overview
