Get Serious About Your Music In The New Year

2017 is almost upon us, and that means one thing specifically, way too many people are about to commit to making New Year’s resolution plans without committing to most of them…but not you, right? You are going to show all the other musicians how it needs to be done, you are going to show them all how music promotion is done! and this article aims to help you to achieve that lofty goal. So, without further ado, here are some things to put on your To-Do list to help you and your music career in 2017.

 Clean Out The Band

This might sound a bit harsh, but love hurts, and progress takes a laser like focus along with an iron fist. Which means anyone that does not see or share the bigger picture needs to go.
Your entire band and marketing team need to be on the same page, and I mean every single musician and person, right down to the flute player. This is not about friendship, forgiveness and a time-will-tell attitude. This is about the task at hand, and that task is not to avoid the elephant in the room for the sake of friendship or potential emotional discomfort. So, call together the entire entourage and talk about that damn elephant before you waste your valuable time and momentum.It is time to discuss everyone’s full intention for the music you create, where you see that music taking you in the future, and more specifically, where you plan to take that music yourselves. If your singer wants to travel the globe but the drummer only wants to travel down the block, then we have a serious problem heading down the tracks in the future. If a member wants to show up to play, but does not want to pony up the cash when it comes down to practice rental space, gear purchases and promotions, then once again, the future headaches are going to start to add up quickly.

 Clean Up Your Image

This is a very important lesson that you do not want to learn too late in the game. It is critical that you control your online image as soon as possible, and that you make sure that everyone else in the band is just as committed to the cause as you are. Starting with the privacy settings on your social media pages, you will want to lock these down enough to separate your personal life from the other online persona that you want to share with the public. I suggest that you start another page dedicated to your music, your band, and even for your personal artistic self. Make sure that you make it difficult for random people to start digging through your personal life and sharing that with your growing fan base. Your music is a message, it is your own life’s soundtrack, and you do not want to distract from the message or muddy up your creative intentions by having a chaotic and mismanaged online presence. If there is a photo that you do not want to have seen, or be associated with, the more popular you get, the harder they will try to find it. You would do well not to forget this lesson; time to start the lockdown and control your creative image today!

Prepare To Spend Some Money On Marketing

Coming from someone that runs a music promotion company this might sound like an obvious plug, but this isn’t about me…that much.
You will need to bring yourself to the fans and not the other way around. You cannot create a song, send it out into the world, and then expect to wait for your greatness to arrive, because I promise you, behind every great musician you have ever known are some hard advertising dollars spent, and waiting, although part of the game, is not the best strategy.Of course, I do not expect you to do this alone, so once again get the band together and decide on the fair monthly budget that you can all pool in equally. When people believe in something deeply they will find away, and that is the point here, everyone should believe in the music you create, and if they do, then this should be a great experience for the band more than anything. With money saved up for the bands future endeavors, you will soon find yourself in apposition to talk about driving to further destinations to play shows, purchasing merchandise to sell on the road or on your website, or even hiring a music promotion company to help you gain serious exposure. Either way, some money in the bank saved up will allow for some creative DIY marketing strategies in the New Year!

Start Reaching Out

As was mentioned before, you must bring yourself to the people and not just wait for them to come to you. Make 2017 about building friendships and professional relationships across the board. Network the hell out of this New Year! Find new music, comment on that new music, and share that new music! Help other artists succeed and gain exposure, and in turn the same will happen for you. Pay it forward so you can have it paid back.Connect through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Spotify, SoundCloud and every other social media service available to you.When you are not shut in making awesome music, you should be out and about building up the awareness of your music around town. Check out new live music whenever you can, talk with the bands that you enjoy, share ideas and marketing strategies, and support the music community that surrounds you. Network, network, and you guessed it, never stop networking, reaching out, and bringing your great music to the people!The 10, 10, and 10 daily social networking to-do list is a great way to build up your network fast. Simply send out ten emails, comment on ten different social media websites, and share your project with ten people a day. If you do this, you will create a solid framework of people who care about your music and will want to help you succeed.

 

Set Specific Goals And Develop Successful Habits

I will be the first to say that this is clearly obvious, but when I say “specific goals” I mean goals that have specific dates attached to them, not just some random date in the future. The road to one day leads to never.
2017 is going to fly by like every other year, no doubt about that, and setting specific time related goals will help you make the most of it. Break down your year into short-term, mid-term, and long-term goals, making sure not to focus on the amount of goals over the importance of those goals. It is better to do one great thing a week than ten minor things. Your goals should be fun, but also worthwhile to your musical cause. Try not to set the bar too high (no setting a goal of playing in front of 100,000 people by the end of the week if you only currently have two fans to your name). Try goals that help the overall process ones that reinforce your personal beliefs in your own self. Perhaps you can finish a certain book you were reading on marketing, or record a podcast, maybe even get through the rough first recording of your new song.
Mid-term goals should take a bit longer to get done, but they inherently will have a larger payoff, while the long-term goals will be the ones that unfold only when you have achieved both your short-term and mid-term goals. These long-term goals will be major achievements and will generally have lasting effects on the bands progress, along with your own feeling of self worth. One of those goals could be to save up enough money to do a cross country tour, or to have your album professionally recorded in a well-known and respected studio, and of course, when you have achieved your long -term goal, celebrate!
A Successful habit is a habit that not only helps you achieve greater things, but it is something you can commit to and will not struggle to keep up. This is a personal decision, and one that needs to be taken seriously no matter what new habit you bring into the picture. Let the words “commit and accomplish” be your mantra for this New Year.
If the bands new habit is to meet three days a week at 8pm to rehearse for an hour, then those days must be committed to, by you and by everyone in the band, and there should be consequences to anyone who continually misses those days (please refer to Cleaning Out The Band).
Your new habits should be your new religion, and they need to be sacred to you. These new habits will define you in 2017 and beyond, so do not take this approach lightly, “Commit and accomplish!”
Create habits that both matter to you and inspire you. Start small at first, but as you flex that specific muscle, you will eventually get better at this and commit to larger things, and when you commit to larger things you embrace even larger successes in all aspects of your music career, as well as your own personal life.

 

Stop Comparing Yourself To Others

An old friend once said “Comparison is the father of discontent”. In short, comparing yourself to someone else is a real source of emotional pain for humans, and you need to stop those comparisons the moment that you acknowledge they exist. You have only one person you will ever need to try to be better than, and that person was whoever you were yesterday.
If you are competing against anyone at all, it is, and will always be, only you.
Your best is your best today, and if you give it your all then the pain and doubt that follows a half-effort, will cease to exist.
The entire artistic community is your family, and they are not in a race to the top before you, so much as they are in a race against their own selves, to whatever end might fulfill them the most; not everyone does this for the money and fame.

 

Play. Explore. Learn. Have Fun. Feed Your Spirit

Life is going to throw a lot of adult stuff your way, and even when you know that, it still can throw you off when it throws an unexpected punch.
Some days you are going to feel as though you don’t have any time to do anything at all but watch as time gets wasted. When in the pursuit of one’s own happiness it can sometimes get tricky to actively chase a dream over doing what you are being told is a more sensible and logical pursuit.
We artists are driven by our passions. We love to create, and even when we are not creating, we are thinking about creating. It is in our blood to be this way, and no matter how much society tries to place us in a labelled corporate box, we will always fight against it. Because of this somewhat rebellious outlook, we will need to agree to stay open to the vast amount of exciting possibilities that surround us always.
You must feed your spirit and your artistic mind the same as you feed your own body to stay alive. There is always a better choice than the unhealthy one, so be aware of what information you feed your mind and spirit.
Read books that ignite your soul. Listen to music that inspires you to create your own. Search for ways every single day to keep yourself excited about being able to create, and actively search out new artists to support and accept into your pool of inspiration.
Stay open to it all.
More important than every other thing I mentioned on this list is this: in the pursuit of happiness do not forget to live, to play, to explore, and to have fun!
If you can do this one thing, you can accomplish anything!

Empire Music Promotions (www.empiremusicpromotions.com) offers result based campaigns aimed at helping you build your own musical empire. Submit your music today!

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