I’m back with another collaborative post for y’all! We all know that it takes talent to help fulfill the desire to have a successful career in music, but here are a few other things that might help.
You can work on developing your music all you want, but when you want to make it as a professional musician, it’s actually all about the image you give off. Unfortunately, you might say, because it kind of should be about the music rather than the artist – but music is judged by the way it looks as much as the way it sounds these days.
If you really want to have a shot at turning your talent into a career you can make a living from, you will need to focus on building an artist persona. Work on the type of image you’re giving off, and you might be able to attract the kind of people who can actually help you out.
Here is a couple of the best ways to understand how you can develop this so that you’re able to focus on where you would like to go again.
Focus on something true
Sure, there’s a lot of empty talk in the world of professional musicians – and you’re probably going to get a lot of tips that will never take you anywhere. While the whole idea of building a persona to make success a bit more likely may sound like the last thing you’d want to do, it’s actually not that difficult to push through.
Focus on emphasising something that’s true about yourself and build your persona around this. That way, your persona will be authentic and a real part of you rather than something you’ve just made up in order to be successful – and it won’t feel as fake, if you will, either.
Think about what the most memorable part of your story is. It could be something about your personality, the way you look, your history – or all of these combined. Make it a part of your artist persona and allow it to do the talking; now you’re on the right path to creating an image of yourself that is both true and relatable.
It’s just one of the ways to keep your sanity while you’re in this industry and keep yourself from feeling like you’re giving the audience every part of you.
Remember a marketing strategy
If you have a persona that works for you and that feels authentic without selling you out, you’ve actually come quite fare. You still need to have a talent in terms of making music, though, or at least you should have a talent – it doesn’t always seem like it’s something that’s required these days.
The next step is to focus on a marketing strategy for your music. You need to think about it as a business and take the necessary steps to make it seen; while any business can have a great product or service, it doesn’t really matter if people don’t know about it.
The same goes for your music career. You might make great music and have a really likeable persona, but you need to get yourself out there and make sure that you’re seen by the audience. Services such as SoundCloud promo can help, by the way, as you’ll be able to get your songs out there a bit more often. Make it a part of your marketing strategy for yourself and have a look around the web for similar options to get your songs out there with a particular focus on social media.
Marketing yourself as a professional musician can be a lot more intimidating than marketing a business – because it’s yourself that’s on the line.
When you have an authentic artist persona, however, it becomes a bit easier; think about your persona as your business venture, and take the necessary steps to promote it. There’s no other way.
This post was a collaborative effort – please check out my disclosure policy page for more details.