I was thinking about the different kinds of approaches to being successful I see from bands and how those approaches impact their success. Not for the first time I looked at a number of successful bands at different staes in their career and compared their activities with unsuccessful bands and my observations of many bands through the years.
Are You Serious About Your Music Career?
Do you stumble along playing gigs and looking good, waiting for the right place right time or situation to find you and change your life? Or wait until someone hires you? Wait for a band or promoter to contact you about performing, or maybe wait until you see a band that you could work with when you just happen to be out at a bar?
Or perhaps you work at your music career with as much dedication and dependability as you would any other job? Do you try to come over as a professional musician? A professional recording engineer, producer, band, band manager?
The essential question is:
Do you make it happen?
Approaches To Band Business
In a business sense there are 5 typical categories of approach taken by bands overall. Bands can move between categories given the right circumstances, but few bands intentionally change their approach and follow through on it:
- Bands who claim "it's about the music" and refuse to do anything really "career development" related
- Bands who wait for success to be handed to them on a plate.
- Bands who would work, if only they knew what to do next.
- Bands who do work, but have no big picture giving their actions direction
- Bands who work hard, know where they are going and how to get there.
Unsurprisingly, bands with little interest career related who believe it is all about the music and bands who wait for success to be handed to them on a plate represent the largest groupings of bands, and the smallest rate of success.
For bands who, career wise, wait for success to find them it purely comes down to luck, and the odds are not good.
Bands who would work if only they knew what to do next is still a fairly large group. At least they have potential to move to forwards towards something more meaningful, but too many get stuck hiding behind the "if only" excuse. In that circumstance they often slip back towards doing nothing meaningful at all, waiting for success to find them, as they realise much of their effort has gone to waste as it lacked direction. Don't get too hung up on this, the fact is that bands in that have the smarts to at least understand that they should be doing something at least have a chance to help themselves.
It will come as no surprise that bands that know what to do, when to do it with a clear direction in mind and who are prepared to work hard is by far the smallest group. This group has a far higher success rate within the music industry AND in the alternative scene.
Taking Your Music Career Seriously
If someone tells you there is an easy way, they are lying to you.
If someone says that it is guarranteed they are lying to you.
There are tools that can help your chances, but they are only that. Tools.
You'll notice that I use the term work quite a bit. The reason is that it takes a lot of effort to do what is required.
You need to be organised to take on the music industry. Without organisation you simply tread water, and as you know with treading water it buys you time but gets you absolutely nowhere.
Band managers are a possibility, but if you take one thing from this blog post, don't wait for anything. There is no "easy way". If a good manager comes along, and they bring good value to you, then great, but don't wait for them to find you before you start planning (yes I really do mean plannning) and organizing exactly how your band is going to progress.
Smaller bands do not need a manager. They may be nice to have, but you will serve yourself far better in understanding the music industry and how it works if you learn to manage your own band first.
This means learning about some very unglamorous topics, hours spent working on tasks for your band when you could be playing your instrument or partying.
How Are Bands Organized?
Most bands are driven by only one or two individuals. These are the people that arrange rehearsals, find gigs, get things fixed and generally come up with most of the band's promotion ideas. Often these are the ones that also come up with most of the songwriting ideas too. Many band members are quite happy that they are not doing these tasks and someone else has the hassle. After all they might get lucky, right?
Even where bands are ruled by votes, and everyone contributes to the writing of the songs there are issues with members carrying their weight.
The fact is that all the band should be pulling together. That might mean that an individual leads the way, but all should be involved in planning, buying into what should be done. Every member, no matter their level of musicianship should take part. Every member should learn about the business.
Why Do All Band Members Need To Work On the Business Of Music?
Lets try and underline this. Your band is competing with millions and millions of other bands. Hundreds of would be startlets posting on Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and YouTube. There is no easy way. If you are going to stand out from the noise of all those other bands, you need every single advantage you can get. You need the advantage of pulling together in the same direction.
After the stage of standing out from the seething masses, at that point you are in competition with other bands who also relatively have their act together. To stand out from them you really will need to know what you are doing. To stop your band imploding or ripping itself apart you definitely need to be bought into what you are doing and where you are going.
Recommended Resources
I recommend the following top music resources:
Experience And Advice
If you are looking to talk to other bands, or music industry professionals of many kinds, then you will get some from professional bodies of various kinds on different aspects of your career. you also need access to a quality community of musicians with a broad range of experience where you can get the chance to discuss your career, gain the knowledge of your peers and seasoned pro's alike.
Don't wait. Make it happen!
Visit The Songstuff Songwriting and Music Community Forums right now and take a step towards the lights.
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