Let’s be real… EVERYBODY and their mother and grandmother does music. Everyone’s a musician. Everyone’s a producer. Everyone is a CEO of a record label. Everyone is everything and a bag of chips. Everyone who does music thinks that their music is the best and they’re the best thing since toilet paper. Everyone has the best lyrics, the best album, the best mixtape, the best image, the best marketing, etc. OK, all of that is cool and it’s good that you have such confidence in what you do, but here’s the PROBLEM…
EVERYONE THINKS THE SAME EXACT WAY YOU DO.
So the million dollar question is what do you really have to offer that will separate you from the rest? Let’s say you’re a rapper and you think you’re the best rapper in the entire universe and you make a mixtape that you feel is the best in the entire universe, then how exactly are you going to stand out from the hundreds and thousands and hundred thousands of rappers who think they’re the best rapper in the entire universe and are trying to sell mixtapes they tell their friends and family and everyone else is the best mixtape in the entire universe?
You can emphasize how “hot” on the streets you are all you want and spam random people all day with your music, but let’s be real, that’s not going to convince anybody anything. What makes any musician stand out is how well they are marketed and in these days and times, what they have to offer outside of music. Yes, ladies and gents, you HAVE to offer more than just music. People download music for free all the time, album sales are continuing to decline, the music industry as we know it is going through nuclear meltdown and so on and so forth; we all know the story. In this digital age, where it’s easy for musicians to not rely on record labels at all to do music and put it out there, music is not only much more accessible to the public, but they have many more options. This means as a musician, you have to offer more than just music in order to get heard.
There are a lot of musicians out there who are pushing the envelope music and business-wise, but at the end of the day it boils down to how they market themselves and what they have to offer outside of music. Musicians will have to think of themselves as a business in order to really move forward in this ever-changing music industry. Internet Marketing has been a real hot thing online for who knows how long. A lot of people are starting their own home-based businesses and making money in their pajamas from things like multi-level marketing (MLM), internet marketing, and affiliate marketing.
In my humble opinion, I think musicians will be able to make the money needed for their music if they embraced these business models. If you need an example of musicians who use the internet marketing business model for their music marketing, then check out musicians like…
The problem is A LOT of musicians don’t like that word “business” and they don’t have respect for marketing because they are solely artist-driven. I can understand because I consider myself to be an artist before a businessman. For the most part, artists mainly use the right side of their brain (the creative side) instead of the left side (the analytical side), so doing business is foreign to most of us. There’s a way to marry the two without losing focus on your music, art, etc. This article called Can Internet Marketing Techniques Sell Music? is something that all up and coming musicians with a Wi-Fi connection should read.
I can go on and on, but I think you all get my point. Offer more than just music and learn how to market yourself. There are many websites with tons of free information on how to use the internet to your advantage to expand your brand. If you’re a musician and you’re serious about turning your passion into a career, then you need to get familiar with websites like…
You can tell everyone how great of a musician you are, but if you don’t learn how to market yourself to the point where you’ll be able to stand out from the rest, then no one will care. Your music might be great, but if you’re serious enough, you’ll feel like you suck if you don’t make it.
