How I “Made It” in the Music Industry: My Top 10 Tips (1)

First off, by “Made It,” I don’t mean filling up arenas or the sort of unlimited abundance that could “make it rain” everyday. I mean making music a full-time focus that pays bills, so that you can start doing what you love.

With all of this talk about Female Hip Hop Artists failing in the music industry and less and less female rappers being signed, I have been inspired to write this article and share what worked and what didn’t ... and a LOT didn’t. I’m still applying these new discoveries myself and learning everyday from them, so I can make no guarantees, but my hope is that this helps a next generation of conscious artists trying to let their voices be heard.

Who am I?
I am an unsigned rapper and singer from Pittsburgh. With Licensing, Shows, MP3 Sales, and a Toyota Hybrid Sponsorship, I can do music full-time and focus on evolving my sound and my SELF, building a team and working more in my community. Most importantly, I am building a fan base. (I don’t really like the word “fan” and prefer supporters or better yet community, but for simplicity sake, we will say fan and fan base here in this article.) My hope is we get to a gift economy in the VERY near future. Meantime lets share in the spirit of collaboration and NOT competition!

So ... let’s begin ... My 10 Tips to “Make It” In the Music Industry ...

1. Don’t Do Free Shows
I love to perform and connect with people, I’ve probably done around 150 free shows over the years. It’s amazing practice, but once you get to a point where you feel like you have confidence in creating an engaging live show, I suggest not continuing to do it without some compensation. Unless of course it’s for a cause you care about, it can be a lot of effort and time that does not amount to very much tangible support. The sound systems at most shows asking you to perform for free could also be a poor representation of your voice and generally folks won’t know your music, so there will be little engagement. Especially if you are a rapper, your lyrics might be too hard understand.

You may get a few die hard fans from a show, but that same effort you put into an online marketing campaign could yield thousands of new die hard supporters. At the same time, I don’t suggest not performing for more than a month or two, to keep you limber and in touch.

2. Don’t Contact Music Blogs 
Smaller music blogs (that are still influential) like Gorilla vs Bear, Pigeons and Planes or Pretty Much Amazing get about 10,000 visits and 200 music submissions a day. How are you supposed to make your email to them stand out?

When I started reaching out to blogs many years ago, the volume of emails coming to these sites wasn’t as large. I definitely received some blog love, and it helped my SEO a great deal, but more and more folks are making amazing music, (which is awesome), and this marketing strategy of emailing music blogs is now over-saturated.

Just imagine how many submissions Stereo Gum and Pitchfork get? And, getting no response, time and time again can be a discouragement that you don’t deserve - but don’t worry, blogs will start reaching out to you, once you build a fan base.

9. Make sure you have an AWESOME EPK

Sonicbids is expensive. You have to pay a monthly fee and then a fee for submitting for each gig. It seems to be over-saturated and less and less effective these days, especially since their latest platform update. I would avoid the free shows at Sonicbids ... for the same reason as above.

Make your own EPK.

Here is my EPK, as an example:

Update it every time something awesome happens.

The beauty of having this readily available is that the media (and fans) will LOVE a 1 stop shop where they can get everything they need about you and spend less of their precious time searching. Your bio, your latest accomplishments, your pics, your music and links to important places should be included.

10. Email is the Holy Grail
What? Email? What is this, 2001?

Email is still, by far, the highest converting online marketing tactic. From my experience, your number of fans is determined by the number of emails you have.

• Not your Facebook fans.
• Not your Twitter following.
• Not your number of Instagram likes on your cute puppy.

And even crazier is that your number of fans = your email list opens, not your total email list. That number will probably be around 50 percent ... so for every 2 emails you get, consider that 1 true fan.

How do you get these emails? 
If you ask, you shall receive.

Once you give away your music for free and post it on all of the Creative Commons websites (make sure you put your social media links in all of the descriptions), you will begin to see new fans on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, etc.

Engage with them, authentically and from your heart. Ask them for their email address so that you can continue to send them free music / concert updates / anything that isn’t spam!

Since you now have someone on your team that is devoted to marketing your music, every new marketing idea you come up with should have an end goal of getting an email address.

CONCLUSION

This entire process will have a spiraling exponential effect. The more fans you get, the more fans you will get. Here it is, again:

1. Make music
2. Give it away for free using a CC license
3. Free music = new fans
4. New fans will reach out via social media and engage, be grateful and love them!
5. Collect emails from your fans
6. Make more music and give it away for free
7. Email your current fans and ask them to share it
8. Free new music + Current fans sharing that music = more new fans
9. Repeat 1 through 8 over and over again.
10. Magical things will happen

• Blogs will start posting your music
• People will want to book you
• Your mp3 sales will start to appear
• You will get licensing opportunities
• Brands that align with you and your music will want to help you

Again, I can make no guarantees and also could share a lot more about what worked and what didn’t but I know time is limited. I will follow up with some more articles very soon, so please, follow me on Twitter to get my updates.

I also believe heavily in putting focus and intention on what you want (the laws of attraction) and could suggest various things that helped me creatively, but if you have a method that works, keep it up! Every mistake is a lesson learned and no way is ever the right way. For example if you are a busker or living and playing on the festival circuit, you are a bad ass and I admire it so much! But, I just hope you find something of value from my suggestions. May the force of amazing music and love, always be with you! xoxo

READ 2

BY WWW . HUFFINGTONPOST . COM