If you are going to go all in on a music career, you need to face the challenges head on. So it’s important to identify those challenges and make a corresponding plan to overcome each one.
1) Let’s start with the obvious - Goal Setting.
Learning to set goals is the single most important factor that decides how much someone achieves over the long term.
By definition, goals determine what you achieve.
Goal setting is so important that we are now working to incorporate it into the onboarding process for EVERY HOME Member. We’ve witnessed over and over again which Members are able to build a business using the resources HOME provides, and they are all goal oriented. If you want to know more about goal setting, check out my recent post - Measuring Milestones in Your Music Career.
2) Assuming you are already creating great music, the second major challenge is Marketing.
Marketing means that you are getting your music in front of the right people.
It starts with knowing who your target audience is, figuring out where they are, and reaching them with your brand, music, message, and content.
It is a constant game of testing what you put out into the world to see what works and what doesn’t. The vast majority of artists that I know have a hard time promoting themselves because they take everything too personally. As an artist, you have to make art you believe in, but ultimately the market decides how much money you make from your art.
At the end of the day it is a numbers game. Yes, quality is important, but persistence and repetition are also vital ingredients for success. You have to put yourself out there over and over again while detaching from the results.
Marketing is very time consuming if you do it yourself, and very costly if you hire a talented marketer. But it is one of the most fundamental and crucial functions of any business, which is why HOME is dedicated to helping our Members crack the code.
Thankfully now that it is 2023, there are some effective and affordable methods of ‘influencer marketing’ that give you the ability to leverage the audiences of other people instead of building them yourself from the ground up.
HOME is actually working on providing more affordable music marketing and promotion for Spotify and TikTok in the new year so stay tuned!
3) NOW Let’s talk about Money.
In my experience, money is one of the biggest challenges that ANYONE who is trying to grow a business must deal with. To clarify, let’s break the money problem down into smaller chunks that relate specifically to music creators and what some potential solutions might be.
Making enough money to focus the majority of your time on music. It is hard to grow any business as a side hustle. So instead, I suggest taking a step toward making music your main thing and filling in the gaps with side hustles.
A few side hustles I have found to be effective for creators:
Ride share and food delivery services. No shame in making this money! Uber and Lyft give you a lot of opportunities to meet people and share your music with them.
Learning audio/visual production and doing work for hire. HOME Membership directly helps you accomplish this, and you probably need this skill set anyway.
Free marketplace goods. Someone very close to me was once making PLENTY of money to pay bills by simply finding free stuff on Facebook Marketplace and then re-listing it for a reasonable price. Easy money!
Songfinch is putting a LOT of money in creators’ pockets. One of our OG Homies is head of artist relations, and HOME Members can get fast-tracked into that opportunity!
Finding grant opportunities. People are supporting the arts more and more, and our sister organization Helping Music Foundation is a good example of that. We’ve set it up to give creative grants of $1,000 to the top talent we can find!
Making enough money to market your music properly. It is true that it takes money to make money. Marketing can be very expensive.
However the good news for 2023 is that, due to the war between TikTok, IG and FB, organic reach is going up for the first time in a long time. Just make sure you are actually setting aside time and money to address this challenge.
Mosts independent artists don’t event have a marketing budget. It is true that some artists can grow organically, but they spend more time. It will cost you your time or your money, so start somewhere and when you see what is working, spend more money on that.
Test a lot of different things. Look at the data and re-invest in what people are listening to the most.
Also look for direct ways to reach industry people who have money making opportunities. Our Songtank music pitch contest puts you face to face with sync reps, A&Rs, publishers AND a chance to win some money to market your music lol… while also live streaming the whole thing to our industry network!
Maximizing how much money you make from your brand and business. Let’s call this ‘scaling’. My personal theory is that you need three gears running at very high speed to properly scale a creative music business. If any of these gears are running slowly, your music business will not scale.
Gear number one in your machine is Production - your product has to be high quality and you have to be releasing often. Almost every artist gets stuck here. You can’t bank on one big release or viral video. Just like any other business, music creators must build a machine that is constantly rolling out a product that people love to come back to over and over again.
Gear number two in your machine is Marketing - at scale this will certainly require a team or a dedicated assistant. Your job in the meantime is to understand marketing well enough to know if the people on your team are doing a good job.
Gear number three in your machine is Engagement - you are building a fanbase. Fans can be fickle or they can become die-hard lifelong supporters. You decide that by how you engage.
You must return to your fans often to become an integral part of their lives.
The engagement takes place when you are able to get back to them, or they are able to get back to you over and over again. Touring and live performance is one way to engage your fans. But it’s 2023, and you should’t restrict yourself geographically. There are people all over the world that could become your superfans!
Those are the 3 gears of your creative machine that need to be firing on all cylinders in order for you to reach scale.
4) The fourth MAJOR challenge is Team.
Most artists want to be more than just an online influencer.
They want to have huge careers like Beyonce, Taylor Swift, or Ed Sheeran. Those massive stars are created and fueled by massive teams of talented people.
You need a community of talented people around you that can help you get to where you want to go.
It takes time to build a dedicated team, but it starts by tapping into your community. You should ALWAYS be identifying talented people around you at a similar level that you want to work with in some capacity. You should also ALWAYS be looking for ways to help others because it comes back to you.
Yes, often a team comes in the form of a management company, label, publisher or sync rep. But more and more artists are realizing that they can be entrepreneurs and build their own team in the ways that other businesses have always done it. Figure out what you need most, and find talented people who understand how to overcome that challenge.
And most of all, be good to people and give them an exciting vision to work towards!
I hope these tips help you overcome your biggest challenges in 2023. HOME is here to support you and help you fulfill the potential of your music career 🎶🚀