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Musicians rob themselves of success by making mistakes that sabotage their careers. You might be doing many things in the right manner. At the same time, you may also be doing certain things wrong. That can keep you from achieving your goals.
That’s why apart from learning about what to do, you also need to know what not to do. Successful music professionals are always looking for ways of succeeding.
You must look for opportunities to learn. This could be in the form of proven, effective advice from professional mentors. Or, by observing how poor decisions kept an artist from achieving their goals.
The digital landscape has become more crowded than ever when it comes to music promotion. But the increase in the number of promotion platforms has had a democratizing effect.
The gates of the industry are now open to everyone. That’s why developing successful marketing strategies is a challenge. From platform-specific advertising managers to CRM. Different marketing tools play a significant role in creating, advertising, and distributing music.
Music promotion platforms like HUDL Music provide you an avenue to showcase your unique music talent to the world. They can help you in connecting to the fans directly.
Some other platforms help in gathering different data points to assess your marketing strategy.
For example, Soundcharts allows you to figure out what’s working and what’s not. It gives users a comprehensive view of their performance across the industry.
Some other music marketing platforms are:
- Media and publications
- Social media
- YouTube
Reasons of Why it’s Difficult for Musicians to Succeed
There are many musicians in the world. But, certain things set apart those who succeed and those who fail in their careers. We’re talking about what separates a professional musician from a hobby musician.
Granted, everyone defines success differently. But you’ll agree that making a living doing what you love is “making it.”
Let’s take a look at some of the mistakes that you need to avoid, to make it in the music industry.
1. Failure to Train Yourself to Have the Right Mindset
A positive mindset is important in achieving success in the music industry. But with a negative mindset, that’s almost impossible.
Training yourself to have a positive mindset enables you to overcome challenges. It enables you to transform obstacles into opportunities and tackle difficulties. As a result, you’re able to achieve the success that most musicians only dream of.
The right mindset from the start of your career helps to build a solid foundation from which to expand.
2. Taking Too Long to Get a Music Career Mentor
Many musicians only depend on their talent to get ahead in their careers. They never think of going for career training from a mentor because:
- They don’t even know that mentoring exists for upcoming musicians
- They just have low levels of ambition
Investing in mentorship training helps to grow your music career. In the end, you’ll be able to earn more money than what you invested into mentorship. This is how:
- You no longer second guess yourself on what you need to do, to grow your career. Working with an experienced mentor helps you to save a lot of time and resources.
- You’ll discover the best ways of promoting yourself and your music, which helps to build your brand. It gives you an advantage whether you work with a music company or not.
- Through training, you’ll learn ways of creating opportunities in music. This helps to stabilize your career, giving you the power to control your success.
3. Inconsistency
Social media plays a critical role in the music industry if success is what you’re looking for. Thus, putting up a post on the day your title is released is not good enough to promote a song.
Social media enables musicians to grow their fan base. It’s through social media that you’ll get millions of people looking for new talents. But, to gain a fanbase that will support you for a long time, you need to post engaging content more regularly. Otherwise, you’ll have more people getting bored and unsubscribing from your platform.
To grow your subscribers and keep them engaged, you must establish a schedule for your next release. This will have your fans anticipating your posts.
Social media is a good platform for connecting musicians to their fans and vice versa. It boosts your chances for success in the industry.
4. The Fear of Getting “Screwed” by Music Companies
There are many stories in the industry about failed musicians. These musicians claim that someone forced them to sign an unfair contract. Some say record label companies refused to pay them what they deserve. Or, that someone “screwed” them and brought down their careers.
These kinds of stories discourage other musicians from getting into business deals. The negative stories completely prevent them from building a career in music. But here is something no one will tell you:
That a lot of music companies are not after ripping off musicians. Rather, they need new talents. They are also in it for a win-win situation and leveraging their resources to grow your career.
Note that these companies are also afraid of investing a lot of resources to help a musician if:
- The musician is mentally or emotionally unstable
- You feel “entitled” to the record label’s resources because you’re good at what you do
- You’re unreliable and lazy
- You can’t help the company earn money in a mutually beneficial way
5. Buying Fake Streams, Followers, or Likes
Many sites offer Facebook and Instagram likes and followers. This can be a tempting offer at a glance, but it can derail your success or prevent you from succeeding.
Much as you can fool followers, some platforms track those who use these techniques. There are also music companies that can tell when you’re buying fake streams, likes, and followers. As a result, your accounts end up getting suspended. Music companies can also withdraw their support.
So instead of wasting money buying likes and followers, you can invest in advertising. It helps to introduce your music to new audiences. Spend time growing an audience of real people. You’re better off having a community of few engaged fans than thousands of fake followers.
6. The Fear of Success
Yes, the fear of success is just as common as the fear of failure. This is more common with experienced musicians on the brink of a big breakthrough.
It’s easy for musicians to sabotage their careers by worrying about how their lives will change. Some even worry about what people will think of them or that they don’t deserve success. Due to worries of such nature, some end up doing things that are against their best interest.
It’s important to realize that everything you tell yourself about why you can’t succeed is nothing but stories. That’s because you have the potential to make it in the music industry more than you can imagine.
Final Take Away
Digitization has changed how the music industry operates. Today, it’s easy to distribute music and reach people without the help of music companies.
A lot of independent artists get into traps that can jeopardize their careers. Yet these obstacles are avoidable in most cases.
We hope the mistakes and the platforms explained in this article will help you to reach your success.
