Every year the music industry becomes more and more profitable. Now worth just under $20 billion dollars globally, the opportunities within it might seem endless. If you’re a budding artist that’s looking to enter the industry, however, you need to know that it’s not the easiest one to get into. It takes true motivation, determination and time to become successful and a recognized artist.
However, if you have the right vision and perspective, then there’s no reason why you can’t thrive within it in the near future. To help you on the right path, here are several things that you consider when entering the music industry:
Your Niche
The first thing that you should do is to determine your niche and the genre of music that you’ll produce. As the industry is so competitive, you need to think about ways in which you can stand out. Whether this is creating your own music using chill beats for sale or writing your own music/lyrics, anything that you can do to grab people’s attention is the way to go. You don’t want to release music that sounds exactly the same as other artists – you need to be different.
However, one word of caution when it comes to this. Although it’s good to be different and extraordinary, you also need to research what trends are popular – as you don’t want to be so unique that the music doesn’t appeal to anyone within the niche you’re looking to get into.
Your Online Presence
In the modern, digital world, you need to have a prominent online presence as an artist. Not only will you want to consider publishing videos of yourself performing online regularly in order to drum up interest, but you’ll also want to create social media pages to promote it.
This, alongside promoting your work with traditional advertising techniques (e.g. fliers or posters) will help to spread the word about your music and allow you to connect with a wider demographic. Nowadays, many people discover artists through the internet. So you don’t want to miss out by not doing this too.
Your Competition
If you want to become a professional musician that’s successful within your genre, you need to know who you’re competing against. Spend some time and look into other similar musicians and think about the ways in which you can differentiate yourself to them.
Your Brand or Artist Identity
Following on from the points about social media and your competition, you’ll want to harness the internet alongside your other marketing techniques to create an extraordinary artist identity and brand that you grow.
When doing this, ensure that your core values align with your brand identity, consider what you’ll do to reflect your brand in day to day life and think about what drives your individual economic engine – i.e. what type of music/artist will people invest in. These are key to making a strong brand that can easily be recognized within the industry.
Who You’ll Need By Your Side
To become successful, you’ll need a team of people by your side the moment that you start to be known within the industry. From a manager to a booking agent, assistant, photographer, Entertainment Attorney to other musicians that accompany you when you perform, your team is a key ingredient to your success.
But there are several things that you’ll want to consider when hiring certain team members. Not only do they need to be fans of your music, but you might want them to have similar values and perspectives, be good at communication and motivated to thrive within the environment.
Copyright Laws
When entering the industry you’ll also want to know the basics of music copyright laws. An aspect that can get easily overlooked, you want to ensure that your music is protected at all costs. By conducting thorough research and hiring the right professionals, it will prevent others from copying your work and claiming it as their own.
You might also want to consider registering your music with the copyright office, who will offer you further protection and provide the right evidence if any claims ever come up questioning the originality of your work.
When writing your own music, you’ll also want to ensure that the work you’re creating is your own and that you only take inspiration for others. You don’t want to find yourself in any legal trouble – this could be incredibly damaging for your future career as a musician.
