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
Asyou 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 Twain, FanBridge (free email blast to 400 subscribers) and/or
MailChimp (Which is free up to 500 subscribers). Tweet Twain 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. FanBridge sends free email blast to 400 subscribers. This service has been around for some time and is one of my favorites. 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 that they can do for you, so the first sign of a lie and you shouldbe 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.How To Make Money From Free Music http://bit.ly/fwI8OT
Resource: http://www.independentmusicadvice.com/
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