People believe you can’t make a living out of music. In today’s gen when people are travelling from all across the world to attend a concert of Beyonce, you can’t just earn a living you can float in luxury from music and music alone.
The reason why aspiring musicians fall off the radar are these silly errors, that you can avoid:
- Practicing your craft inconsistently
In his book Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell rightly states that anyone wanting to be a master at a craft must put in at least put 10,000 hours of practice. While this is an obvious fact for almost everyone, you would be surprised at the number of musicians who don’t stick to a regular practice schedule everyday.
If you don’t want to be left in the pack of average, never, I repeat NEVER miss a practice session, even if you are on a vacation with your family or it is the day of a festival. I have seen great artists training for more than 18 hours a day. Infact, Eminem also follows the golden rule of 10,000 hours!
- Taking constructive criticism poorly
One of the biggest mistakes committed by an aspiring musician is, perhaps, to reject constructive, professional criticism. You might often tend to shut down those who offer helpful advice and embrace those who talk highly of your craft. But if you want to reach your full potential as a musician, you have to be completely open-minded to getting feedback, both negative and positive, and acting upon it.
It is true that not all feedback is genuine but if the majority of the population is that you need to check your pitch or try some other tunes, then there are high chances that it is the right thing to do. That said, you must know how to differentiate between genuine and fake criticism. Do not change your entire genre or persona based on the opinions of someone.
- Not becoming a good marketer
Too many musicians focus solely on their music. They believe that a label or manager can get their music before their fans, or that merely uploading their music to SoundCloud or YouTube is enough. Well, the reality is quite contrary.
There’s just too much music out there. So if you are waiting to be discovered you need to revise your gameplan. On SoundCloud, ten hours of audio is uploaded each minute, and nearly none of these songs ever get a significant number of plays.
Research more about your craft and learn the new music marketing strategies, it will help you gain an edge over others.Take help from a music management platform and take your music forward. After all, what’s the whole point of creating music, if it fails to reach out to people?
- Not prioritizing emails as much as social media
The power of social media in the 21st century is unmatchable. It gives you a desired ‘free’ platform to reach out to a massive audience all at once!
Still, social media beats emails in almost every metric. However, the real issue with social media is that the organic reach and genuine engagement is VERY less. For instance, Twitter’s organic reach is healthier than Facebook’s 2%, as they show tweets in real-time, however, engagement continues to be below 1%.
While on the contrary, on emails musicians receive an open rate of 22 and a click-through rate of 3. Well, it might appear to be a small number right now, but it’s a LOT to get your music out there.
On a mailing list, you can personalize your message if you are aware of the recipient’s persona. This is the reason that distinguishes emails from social media. In addition, your emails are sent directly to subscribers of your mailing list, therefore your reach is almost 100% as compared to social media – because there might be friends on your list that won’t see your post on their walls.
So, develop a social media presence but don’t forget your mailing list.
- Touring Before Building a local Following
For every musician, touring is a dream – to be able to perform concerts in every corner of the world is the ultimate aim for all the aspiring musicians. Touring is a totally different ball game altogether. It is extraordinarily expensive and demands strategic planning as compared to local shows.
Thus, if you set out on a tour too early in your career, it can prove to be a fatal fall for you. Because practically who would want to listen to an artist who doesn’t even have a local fan-base?
Make efforts to build a local fanbase, once you know you can count on it, get going to achieve what you always dreamt of.