Making A Highly Profitable and Sustainable Music Career

The goal for most musicians is to be able to make living off their music career. For some people who do it solely for artistic expression and not for the money, then you can stay at your regular 9-5 and be miserable and get no where with your career.

For everyone else, this is a great article I found on Music Think Tank about how to make a living by being a musician. So if you think you have it in you, read on to see the common mistakes people make and learn how to correct them! But check out the original article because it has a ton more info in it!

1. Not Taking The Time To Identify Your Market
One of the most common mistakes made by musicians is that they spend the time to create an album, increase their musical skills, or work in another area of the music industry, but when it comes time to receive the payoff for their hard work, they have great difficulty making any money. This happens because they have not taken the time to build a database of customers who are ready and willing to pay for the value that the musician is offering. 

2.Not Having Solid Goals And Ways To Reach Them
To earn a good living in the music industry, you MUST develop a specific plan for how you will reach your goals. If you merely fantasize about making a lot of money, this is not enough to make this goal a reality. Rather than fantasizing, start working toward what you want to achieve by asking yourself the following questions:

1. What is your desired yearly income from your music career?
2. What are the sources of musical income that will make the amount in question 1 possible?
3. What action must you take to set up these sources of income? (Read this article on music industry career development to find out more on this subject.)
4. How many ways can you ADD VALUE to your interactions with people in the music business? (Think of every possibility!)
5. How many ways can you eliminate risk for other people in the music business

After you have figured out your answers for each question above, you must focus on making every action you take in your music career go toward achieving the exact goals you have made for yourself.

3.Thinking That Popularity = Making A Lot Of Money In The Music Industry

Fact is, the majority of musicians who are ‘making it’ in the music industry are NOT rock stars. Being part of a popular band does not mean that you will be earning a great living. The truth is that some musicians (who are very popular) still work side jobs just to get by. By understanding this, you will be able to push ‘fame’ aside in order to focus on the most effective ways to work toward your goal of making a good living in music. Of course it is possible to both be famous AND make a lot of money in the music industry, however it is most important at this point to focus your efforts on the appropriate aspects of your goal.

4.Not Taking The Time To Set Up Various Music Related Sources Of Income
It is common for musicians to treat their music career in the same manner that they have treated any other job that they have had. They expect a single paycheck at the end of an established period of time from doing a “single” activity. Unfortunately, this approach will NOT help you to achieve financial success in the music business. In order to make a good living in your music career, you must stop thinking from the mindset of obtaining a single sum of money as your main goal. Instead, you must work to build many different sources of musical income that go into your bank account on an ongoing, residual basis. By taking this approach, it becomes much easier to make a lot of money from music. In fact, musicians who use this method with save themselves time as well (because they do not have to continually work to get a paycheck). This enables them to have more freedom to pursue things such as writing music, touring and performing, or recording in the studio. In the end, it is important to have income coming in from both your active efforts and your past efforts that you already took the time to set up (that continue to make you money). Additionally, by approaching your music career in this manner, you will feel much more stable since you will not be dependent on any single source of income to pay your bills

5.Not Consistently Providing Additional Value To Other People In The Music Industry
 If you don’t want to blend in with the crowd and go unnoticed, you will need to gain the upper hand on your music competition by creating value that far exceeds that of what most musicians are able to offer. This does NOT simply mean working on developing your music skills! Developing truly high value in your music career deals with many different aspects of your personal mindset, emotional stability under stress, and ability to work very hard on a consistent basis. If you want to make a lot of money in your music career, you will need to make it 110% clear that you are the number one choice when someone in the music industry must choose between you and your competitors. In fact, this must be TOTALLY clear before anyone has even listened to one second of your music!

This may seem like a simple concept as you are reading it right now. However, as simple as it may be, almost all musicians DO NOT build their music careers by acting on this basic principle. To find out how prepared you are to use this idea in your won music career, fill out this assessment on creating value as a musician. By increasing your potential to create value (for all people involved) during any music related activity, you will be able to quickly earn a lot of money in the music business.



Click Here for the original article