6 Habits of a Successful-Enough Musician

There are six qualities a musician should have to optimize their potential for success in any genre. First, you need to be so hungry (metaphorically) that you scrap and scrape for every morsel of accomplishment within your line of site.  This means diving head first into your career and throwing out “Plan B” from the get-go. Second, you need to be willing to learn. If you are one of those musicians who take on the industry thinking that you already know everything you need to know, you will not only crash and burn in a flash, but you obviously know nothing. Third, be willing to be hungry (literally). Accept the fact that you are likely to spend most, or all, of your career teetering on the fence of ends-meet. Even if you can’t shake the dream of playing Saturday Night Live and riding in limos, you have to be willing to give it up before you even have it. Fourth, find a healthy and productive balance between patience and persistence. Do not expect overnight, over-month, over-year, or even over-decade success. This is the best way to avoid discouragement and if you keep at it, the better the chance that your big opportunity will come and when it does, you’ll know it and be ready. Fifth, treat your music like it’s your job. Whatever your talent, whatever your role in the band, dedicate everyday to doing it better than you did the day before. Sixth, look off the beaten path for those extra scraps of income. Most musicians out there have their eyes set on The Big Score. This could mean that they only want to work paying gigs or they want to hold off on a music video until (a version of) MTV (that’s been extinct for a decade) asks them to.

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Selling Without Selling Out

Over the past decade or so, the once ultimate insult – “Sellout” – has lost nearly all its sting except for in a few of the fringier music communities. The term is/was often applied to any artist who experience overnight success (i.e., Green Day, Sugar Ray), but those who use it intelligently, use it to describe artist who change their style/philosophy in favor of of commercial success. To cite my pervious examples, Green Day did not really sellout since they never claimed to be a punk band (or have any values) to begin with. On the flipside, Sugar Ray radically changed their music style from hardcore/metal to the cheesy pop, driven by Spanish-style acoustic guitar we heard in their hit “Fly”.

While many will argue that the term “Sellout” is entirely dead and artists today should do whatever they have to make themselves marketable, this may not be the best advice. For music to work (sound good), it often needs some degree of sincerity. There are obvious exceptions which can be pointed out in the most major of pop stars (who don’t write their own songs), but chances are that if you are smart enough to seek advice for your music career, you don’t “have” what these stars “have”.

Back in the 60s and 70s, there was a pop band from Brazil called Os Mutantes. They basically sounded like a mash-up between Revolver-era and Sgt. Pepper-era Beatles, but sang in Portuguese. Though the experienced very little success, even in their own country, until about 10 years ago when they slowly gathered a cult following in the U.S. and Europe with high critical acclaim to go with it. Making the most of this phenomenon, they reunited to tour and released a new album earlier this year. However, in an effort to maximize their popularity, they began writing songs in English (which is quite obviously their second language) riddled every song with metal-style guitar solos, presumably catering to what they imagined American taste to be. As a result the album falls short by several kilometers. The mistake they made (and I believe this was motivated by good-hearted naivety rather than straightforward greed) is that people who were fans of their old material liked their sound as it was and didn’t care if they couldn’t understand the lyrics. If they had continued in the style that got them recognition in the first place, their modest popularity might still be growing.

One example of a band that was able to reach out to new fans while retaining the old 90s lo-fi indie rockers Guided by Voices. Their first 10 albums (the last 3 of which put them on-the-map) were recorded in basements and garages on 4-tracks. When they were eventually signed to a relatively major label, they began recording one album a year in a high-end studio with production values to match. They managed to keep their old fans by releasing one of two lo-fi albums in concert with the studio releases. However this may not be much of an option since most songwriters are not prolific enough to write and record an album every 2-3 months.

The point is that the difference between selling and selling out is how you go about it. The best strategy is to find a middle ground that works for your music.

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It Was Never About The Music

The number one thought you can have that is sure to doom you from ever having a career in the music industry is making the mistake that it is ‘all about the music’. While everything you do for your career has something to do with your music, banking on the idea that you’ll achieve notoriety based on your songs alone is malignantly naïve. As confident as you might be in your songs, how much success can you really expect solely from word of mouth or social media posts (which are basically the same thing)? A good rule of thumb is that for every dollar you spend on recording, you should be spending two (dollars) on marketing. 

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Touring Without a Net

With record sales continuing to drop, constant touring has become one of the best ways for artists to make a living doing what they love. While to many musicians, this is a good problem to have, the unfortunate fact remains that you have to spend money to make money. Meaning that a substantial investment is needed to get the tour rolling, largely because the pay for each gig is very uncertain. You don’t want to end up in a situation when you are counting on a hundred dollar payout from a gig with high school bands in Butte, MT to cover the gas and food costs of getting you to a dive bar outside Carson City, NV.  The trick to making sure a tour goes smoothly is have some cash to fall back on if one, two, or three nights bring in little or no money.

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