How To Become a Successful Musician: The music industry is an entertainment industry. The industry has drawn a lot of attention which has stood the test of time from time immemorial. Asides that the industry is an attractive one, it deals on music which is a very exciting necessity nature has bestowed on humanity. Almost every person likes music although the favourite genres and categories of people will always differ. So, this makes the music industry one with a very large and unlimited client or fan base (audience). And interestingly, in the music industry, being Peter’s fan does not jeopardize the chances of James having a large fan base.
Thus, the music industry is a very lucrative one. Its lucrative nature contributes to what makes the industry most attractive. But the question is, can you handle popularity? Asides being talented, hardworking and having the necessary promotion means, the capital and all that is necessary, being a successful musician is a business of popularity. And in fact, popularity is one of the major benchmark for underlining a successful musician.
The music industry is one with different categories. There is pop, rock, rnb, hip hop, highlife, reggae, gospel, rhythm and blues, classical, jazz, folk, country music and so many more. Another is that one may be specialized on one or more of beat making, vocals, sound engineering, instrumentals, recording and editing, music video directing and so on.
These are what make up the music industry and the profession of being a musician. To be considered successful as a musician means that your music has made you famous and that your career and fame as a musician yields adequate income for you. The struggle as a musician is with consistency. After attaining fame, the journey in fact begins in order to sustain the fame and remain successful. Here are recommendations on how to become a successful musician.
13 Tips On How To Become A Great and Successful Musician/Artist
1. Determination and Hardworking: To become successful as a musician one must have the determination to be successful. It would be a lot easier where things are not being forced; when the passion and the talent is there. It is upon this talent and determination that talent is developed. Making of good music requires a lot of physical and mental effort.
This is where hardworking comes in. too become and remain successful in your music career, ample time must be spent in the studio with a lot of trials and errors. This is unarguably the first step to having a successful music career.
2. Compete with yourself: Competing with others will make you loose purpose in your music career, and in fact it would bring you down. A musician who desires to be successful must understand that he is unique in his own way. This will save you a lot of inconsistencies and as well boost your confidence and pace of self-development. Te only person you should be in competition with is yourself.
This means that you should rather work on being a better version of yourself. Work on being better than you were yesterday. Music industry is a public industry. As you are springing up, eyes are already on you. People want to see you be your real self and see the top artists as models and motivators as opposed to your rivals or co-competitors.
3. Stay committed: After taking the decision of becoming a successful music artist, you have a great deal of task to stand by that decision and back it up with actions because it doesn’t end by saying it alone. To achieve success, a great level of commitment is required from the person. You need to put in maximum effort , especially at the beginning of your career as a musician.
You need to stay focused and committed to the very things that really matters to you and your career. Create more time to practice your lyrics and songs, your instruments and rhythm, the synergy of voice and sound, practically everything. You have to be committed to your goal and keep working towards it without taking your eyes off the ball, even for a moment.
4. Be Versatile: The music industry is known to be very versatile and all encompassing. However, being versatile in order to succeed in the industry does not require you to engage in practically everything that has to do with all aspects of music. You must have to first, discover your self, your talent and area of interest, skill and strength. This will help you nuture it into perfection.
Try to understand more than one musical area or aspect so that you can easily blend, be gain knowledge and experience to create quality contents. This point does not in anyway discredit the point that one need to focus on his most efficient area, it only buttresses the idea of self-discovery through diversification a d accumulation of quality knowledge to enable you become more efficient in your most preferred area. This is one of the ways to become very good at what you do and set you on track to become a successful musician.
5. Cease the opportunity of meeting others in the Industry: Music is a game of fame, and fame can be contagious. To become and remain a successful musician it is necessary to have a connection and good relationship with your colleagues in the field. Music is not a one man job; it is a job of team effort. Thus, you would see one beat maker featuring a vocalist or one artist featuring the other.
An upcoming artist will get more fame when he features or is featured by an already made artist. Even, when already made artists feature themselves in one song it usually would attract more attention from their various fans, thereby making the music more saleable than it may have been if it were to be a single.
Many successful musicians have contracted their fame through their relationship with other musicians. Meeting of others in the industry is a tool particularly favourable to the upcoming musicians. It favours the most when the person is hardworking and talented. Good number of musicians did not rise by themselves; they were rather lifted through the influence of top artists. Not maximizing this tool may render slow your success rate.
6. Capital Investment: Sadly, everything involves capital and not to talk of the business of music. Making of music requires a lot of capital. Capital is needed to be invested in order to make the music, produce and promote it. This demand is such a horrible one for upcoming musicians or artists with low income. But it not does matter how large your income is at the very onset. So many successful musicians that we have today started from the scratch; they worked with their available resources and their hard work, determination, persistence and consistency paved opportunities for them.
The music industry is a public one and people will always support and encourage good music spontaneously. The music industry is a business and every business demands the investment of capital in order to thrive.
7. Have a Media Handle: We have long gone beyond the era when music is bought on cassettes. The technology in media today has taken a glamorous shape. This is an advantaged for the promotion of music.
There is no successful musician today without a social media handle. Such avenues enable artists to engage their fans and most importantly get reviews. Having a functional social media handle has made the promotion of music a lot easier and less expensive today.
8. Choose and stick to your Genre: Today, some highlife musicians are switching over to hip hop. This does not always go well. It renders the musician inconsistent and he would certainly loose fans. This is a preliminary as well as a continuing demand. To be successful as a musician, you have to choose your genre and stick to it. Your genre is usually the genre you are naturally interested in or inclined to.
9. The act of Handling Popularity: It must be reiterated that the music industry is a public one. A musician’s success rate depends o his level of fame amongst other things. Being successful in the music industry may also mean being popular.
And the question goes; to what extent can you handle popularity? Handling popularity is an everyday demand. As a successful musician, you have got all eyes on you. Even your personal opinion about something can jeopardize your career if it goes wrong. This boils down to living a meticulous lifestyle as much as you can because everything you do may affect your music career positively or otherwise.
10. Learn a Musical Instrument if you can: This is an added advantage to any musician. A musician that is conversant with an instrument is naturally ahead and making of music would be a lot easier for him. If learning of musical instrument is too much of a task then you can stop at learning the basics of music. Music is beyond vocalizing and beat making. A musically inclined musician is naturally ahead of others.
11. Have Initiatives: As a musician, it is not enough to make music and release them. The bulk of entertainment is what happens right on stage. You can organize a concert, live performance and the likes, not necessarily on your own. You can partner with other musicians and entertainers.
For the upcoming artists, you can sell your music by hosting shows and performance free or at subsidized rates. And about initiatives, you can always initiate unusual ideas.
12. Seek Collaborations: Becoming a star and very famous might be quite challenging if intended to be a sole effect. Modern music stars has diversified music production and synergies to a state where musicians collaborate to make hit songs.
This on its own is an advantage to intending super stars joining the industry as all they need to do, sometimes is to broker a collaboration contract with an already famous music artist to help them publicize themselves and their talents. It has helped so many artists in the industry and still remains one of the viable means of becoming successful in the music industry.
13. Be Original: There are many extant laws around the world that regulates intellectual property. This is to shun all forms of intellctual theft and encourage originality in art. To this effect, you may be doing yourself a great disservice if you decide to copy other peoes work and by so doing, you may never achieve musical success. So, to achieve a successful musical career, you may want to stay original, write and produce only original contents.
This will bring a new style, your unique style, to the industry, it is capable of changing the dynamics and consumers preference or accommodate your style to the list of existing preferences and that would automatically increase your popularity and success.
Conclusion
The music industry is a highly competitive one. To remain steady on tract a lot of continuous effort is demanded. There is no magic to attaining success in any field. There is always a working process and recommendations as have been highlighted for the music industry in this article.
