The Secret to Making It in the New Music Industry

Choosing to pursue a career in music appears as intelligent as poking a stick through the bars of a lion cage. In this analogy, the lion is the music industry. For many of us, the choice to try to tame the beast comes from great passion, or great rebellion. Without it, we wouldn’t last until the final curtain. 

In many industries, there is a trodden path to getting where we want to go. Doctors go to medical school. Roofers learn their trade and hang out a shingle if they don’t join an established company. But the performing artist or songwriter looks for a path and finds no clear template to follow. Successful songwriters and artists can’t often explain how they got to their destination, often crediting their success to a stroke of luck or a chance helping hand. And the truth is, the industry of today is not the industry they once knew, and whatever path they wore through the dirt, the winds of change have long since blown any trace of it away.

So how can songwriters and artists give themselves the best chance of building and sustaining a career in music when there are no real guarantees? Universities and colleges teaching the skills necessary to join the ranks of songwriters, producers and artists of tomorrow’s music industry are good places to start when learning what skills are necessary. But, they are limited, too, in their faculty’s ability to look forward, rather than back, into the skills we’ll need to become and stay relevant. Furthermore, gaining and maintaining accreditation requires programs offer certain courses. Some things, like the US postal service, are just too cumbersome to turn around before the times change out from under their understaffed feet.

It might be pertinent to mention I was educated at Berklee College of Music in Boston. No doubt, I had the opportunity to get an A-class education there, if I chose to take advantage of it. I had access to faculty, and students, who were the past, present and future of the industry I longed to make my living within. But my schedule was laden with classes like Traditional Harmony, Jingle Writing, and Arranging. These courses were undoubtedly useful to me and helped me train my ear, however, it was what I didn’t have that is concerning. There was no education in managing my time, personal finances, building and maintaining a network, thinking like an entrepreneur, or building a team. There was no talk of branding, release strategy, or mental and physical health foundations. What I had was what the generation before me had put into existence. And the gaps were so wide flies got stuck in my teeth.

Music education isn’t the problem. The skills I was taught reflected the industry of the past. The problem is, real school starts when we enter the industry of tomorrow. And most artists and songwriters assume that someone out there knows what tomorrow looks like. But I don’t believe our only alternative to failure is fortune-telling. I think the problem lies in our eagerness to assume those who were successful before us understand the problem sets we’re dealing with, and would solve them equally well if they were in our shoes.

Yesterday’s artist had to write songs, rehearse a band, play gigs, get signed, and hope their record gets released. That was the deal. Today’s artist has to write songs, rehearse a band, find a producer who cares about their music, record their own record, design their own artwork, run their own social networking campaign, design a release strategy and stick to it, book gigs in person and online, develop and maintain a fanbase, and work a side job to pay for all of it. No wonder music careers favor the young.

I believe the single most challenging hurdle for anyone trying to establish themselves as a writer, artist, producer or musician in today’s market is the solitary nature in which we now operate. It’s never been easier to pursue a music career. But in some ways, it’s never been harder. Instead of managing the art, artists find themselves wearing all the different pants. And as expected, some of them chafe. And instead of using the good sense we’d use in other careers where people specialize in various aspects of the job, we try to do it all. Songwriters begin producing and engineering their own records, running their own campaigns, trying to crack the latest FB ad code, and running their own social media channels, all with very little actual outside help. Most of us just churn out and burn out. 

What we need is people. We need to utilize our skillsets, drawn from other areas of our lives, to assemble teams who align with our vision. We need to look at ourselves as tiny companies, worth investing into for the sake of creating impact with our music.

Many of the songwriters and artists I work with daily have highly developed skills in other areas of work and life. Some are therapists, some are event planners, some have had long careers as executives in demanding roles. Some are parents running a tight household where money is tight and time is precious. The skills we acquire through daily living are skills imperative to the songwriter, artist, producer and musician of today. And in an industry in which the individual is more an entrepreneur than ever before, these skills are going to make the musician of tomorrow even more qualified.

Certainly, developing the skills as a musician to hang with other musicians of high skillsets is bottom-line important when we’re thinking about a career as a musician. I’ll focus my next article on what those skills are that are taught in music school, and the ones that aren’t but should be. But drawing from the skills we gain by living life, such as financial planning, identifying our strengths and leading with them, maintaining genuine connections with people, branding and marketing, meeting a deadline, or determining the best opportunities in line with our goals can put us much closer to our aspirations and our instincts as we go for our dreams.

So instead of being dragged across the tundra in a sharp-toothed grip, I urge anyone desiring a career in music to take stock of your skills. As the single employee of You, Inc., who would you hire to compliment your skillset and get the job done? If traditional structures of paid employees isn’t an option, what other scaffolding could you imagine to give yourself the support and the bandwidth to lean into your strengths even further? Is there a way in the current climate in which you don’t have to be CEO, CPO, COO, and every other OO you can think of? In an industry that is bound to keep changing, one thing will always remain true - nobody ever made it on their own. Find good people to accompany you on your journey, and be a good companion to others on theirs. When we find our herd, and the likelihood any one of us will be picked off at the back of the pack gets smaller and smaller. And for those of us in love with music, the true measure of success is just getting to wake up and do it another day.  

Stay Creative,