What Happens When You Decide to Choose
“All paths are present, always… and we can but choose among them.†– Jacqueline Carey.
To rephrase this, it means you can go in any direction you want to go, you just have to choose.
But you must choose a path.
unsuccessful people don’t choose. Instead, they meander through life.
If you want to make a living making music, the path is there. Always. But you must choose.
The experience you’ll require for success is on every journey but only after you’ve chosen. Realize that you won’t have all the track laid down before the train leaves the station.
You must have faith. Rely on your intelligence and accept the failures.
Because there will be failures. Lots of them! If you want to double your successes you have to double your failures.
Forget about what other people say. Trust me, when you start learning more than them they’ll hate you for it.
You must transform into a marketer. You need to create your own audience before the industry will stand up and take notice.
The problem for most artists is that they don’t know where to begin with the marketing thing.
On one hand, marketing leaves a sour taste in your mouth; you think used car salesman.
On the other hand, not many of life’s little moments can beat out the feeling when someone responds to your music positively. If you’ve done it once, you can do it twice.
Do it 1,000 times and you’ll have a solid audience with a solid cash flow.
Take social media, for instance. We often feel like we don’t want to begin until we can master all the platforms. Of course, we don’t focus and work on any platforms while we’re thinking about mastering all of them, so we wait.
Then we get distracted on the mission critical marketing piece by telling ourselves that we need to focus elsewhere first. Like the music.
We think, “I’ll wait until I get this CD finished and then I’ll focus on the marketing.â€
But that doesn’t ever work.
Not anymore.
That’s a delay tactic you’re using on yourself.
Whether you believe it or not, in today’s music market, the artist comes first, then the music.
Which means you need to be marketing RIGHT NOW.
No excuses! There is literally no good reason whatsoever for you to delay the marketing of YOU.
We’ve begun marketing some of our artists (growing their audience) as much as 18 months before the music was released.
We began marketing one artist and we hadn’t even defined the artistic lane on her project yet!
The most powerful story is the story you tell yourself.
What story do you choose to tell yourself?
You won’t put out 1 killer music video that will go viral and change your life forever.
That will require consistent work on cover songs. You’ll need to put out 1 cover video per week without fail for at least a year. I promise you’ll look back in amazement.
Let me save you the suspense, the first couple videos will take way too long to execute. But if you commit to 8 videos in 8 weeks you’ll find that the last 2 videos will take 10% of the time that the first 2 videos took.
You probably won’t get on a big TV talent show, but even if you do you’ll be barely famous for 15 minutes and then they’ll forget about you because you weren’t prepared to harvest all that heat.
You won’t know who they were.
You’ll need to set up infrastructure to capture contact information. Once you’re on the show massive amounts of people will begin to hashtag the show, judge’s names, and contestant names. All these people just raised their hands to identify themselves as fans of the show and fans of you.
Reach out to them. Oh, it’s super easy to hop on the phone and call every freakin’ radio station in the country to set up an interview when you’re on TV. Just a thought.
You probably won’t get your song on the radio, but if you do it’s not going to change your life. Again, you’ll have no idea who heard it. You won’t know who liked it.
I mean it. I have 3 artists in the top 50 on the Music Row charts at the moment. That means they’re getting spins. Their highest chart position + $2.51 will get them a venti drip at Starbucks.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not hurting their brand, but the return on investment isn’t worth the price this early in the game.
Radio is for later.
You need data right now.
You need measurable results.
You need to see a definite ROI (Return On Investment) for every dollar you spend. I’m not saying you’re going to get your money back this early on, but you need SOMETHING to measure the return; like an email address.
Permission Marketing is the key to growing your audience.
Growing your audience starts with social media and YouTube. They’re free. Oops, I didn’t mean to blow your best excuse for not making it…Money.
Then you must harvest the contact data and know what to do with it after you do. If you own the contact information you’ll always be able to reach them for free.
Every other industry on this planet has radically transformed because of the internet. The makeover has been the same all around; the creators of the product or service get directly in touch with the end user.
Distribution is out.
Eventually.
Think about the travel industry. Once people could book their own flights online, travel agents vanished. The service providers like airlines, rental car companies, and cruises could interact directly with you, the end user. Travel agents instantly became irrelevant for unsophisticated travel.
Think about Dell Computer company. They don’t sell through distribution. They control every aspect of the way you feel about their product and service from the advertising to the purchase, to the tech support.
They control the customer journey.
The music industry will go the same way because EVERYONE ELSE HAS.
Do you see the writing on the wall?
The wounds to the formerly successful pipeline for developing the art, creating the demand, and distributing the product are relatively fresh in the music industry.
Predictably, the industry is going to be slow to adapt.
But the artist who adapts now is the artist who will win.
The artist who chooses to market RIGHT NOW will be victorious.
You cannot afford to wait if you’re serious about making a living in the music industry.
You must move now.
The learning curve is stout but it’s not rocket science, therefore, completely achievable.
Hell, there are artists who have MASTERED it.
Pursue excellence in marketing like you hopefully chase the mastery of your craft.
Excellence requires regular work.
The kind of work one can only do once they’ve chosen a path.
In 1519 AD, during the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Hernán Cortés, the Spanish commander, scuttled his ships so that his men would have to conquer or die.
He chose a path and didn’t waiver.
What will you choose?
Stay
In
Tune
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