3 Biggest Mistakes Independent Artists Make
I can’t believe how many artists are unaware of the mistakes they make on a daily basis. Don’t get me wrong, we all make mistakes. There are some mistakes that artists cannot afford to make, mistakes can be costly especially for an independent artist). In this article I will discuss three major mistakes that will impact an artist music career.
What’s your motive? Are you passionate about music or fame?
The first and biggest mistake artists make is understanding their MOTIVE, in other words I mean DO IT FOR THE MUSIC! Just like any other craft that we can learn in life, the better we get at it we sometimes loose the purpose in why we decided to do it. Music is one of the only forms of expression that enters our mind and our subconscious without permission. At some point it has done just that. It took over our mind and we started to apply logic and action then started creating what we could hear and feel on the inside. The feeling that music gives is remarkable and the persuasion it has is uncharted. We sometimes loose the love for the remarkable feeling and base it off of sales, listeners, downloads, website traffic etc.
A lot of times our motive changes and then we put our first love on the back burner. Sooner or later the actual sound of our music takes a hit. Not being passionate about the music we create shows and sticks out like a sore thumb. A lot of music that was created back in the day, like Michael Jackson, is considered timeless and why? That era created music strictly off of feeling and the love of it. Nowadays it’s hard to hear anything unique because everything sounds the same. Music played on the radio now all sounds alike and very few would be considered timeless music because they are all trying to just compete with the same sounds and same content.
Whatever made us fall in love with music should be the same thing that pushes our creative/logical senses to keep the LOVE of the music as the reason to why we create it.
Quality of their audio.
Since technology has put the power of reaching audiences at the fingertips of any individual, it is important to understand that you are in the same ocean with the artists in the industry. Nowadays anybody can put an album on iTunes, Google Play, CD Baby, or Amazon Music. Sites like Reverbnation, Souncloud, YouTube, Noisetrade, and Bandcamp has made it ridiculously simple for an independent artist to be heard and found.
The quality of your music is imperative and may just be the one key to success or to failure. We are now in the era of DIY and home studios. They along have pros and cons. On one hand they allow for us to create the music we love without off sourcing to other musicians, singers, producers, and engineers. The down side is that a lot of us don’t try to be as professional as we can be with our DIY sound quality, in other words before there was a Protools…there were professionals. The internet has made information easy to access and to learn the ins and outs of the creating he best music quality.
If we cannot create the music quality we desire ourselves then we look to work with other musicians, engineers and producers. The internet has also made it available to work with online engineers and producers if you cannot find one locally that works best with you and your style of music.
Brand their selves incorrectly online.
Now this topic is a very broad topic but I want to touch base on the issues I see a lot and one is the website. Think of online like a physical mall and your website is a store. If you are in the same mall as one of your favorite artists, your store would have to look presentable and be able to compete with store, well the same goes as online.
Too many artists use just the links to their music or their social network to represent their brand. I had recorded a video on thinking a like a business vs. thinking like an individual which helps breaks down this mindset we need to have. It goes into what steps that are needed to brand their selves as. It is so easy to create a website to represent your brand. You don’t need a designer! You can do IT YOURSELF!
There are many sites like Wix.com and Weebly.com that are recognized as some of the easiest websites to design and they are FREE with a hosting domain name like “test123.weebly.com.” There are some pros and cons with these websites but if you do not have a website at all they are good starting points. WIX and Weebly deal with flash platforms which make it virtually easy to configure the way you need to. They have amazing free layouts that you can choose from that will have your website looking professional. In my opinion I say, “Stick as close as you can to the template”.
The cons to these types of sites are that they are only recognized as “one page” no matter how many pages you may have on your site. This means that if someone were to search for information that is unique to a certain page on your site, they will only be directed to your whole website and not to that specific page. Now this may not be so much of a big deal depending on what you choose to have on your website. Usually all you need is:
A “Music” page to post your music.
A “Contact” page for people to contact you.
A “About” page that has a biography of you and your brand.
A “Gallery” page that shows high quality photos and videos of you in your element.
The are many other sites that offer high quality websites that look professional in which I recommend:
HostGator
WordPress
GoDaddy
They offer platforms like Website Builder and WordPress’s platform, that offer hundreds templates that will have your website looking elite. I totally recommend using one of these sites if you want to achieve the best overall look and performance for your website. The best thing about is that it is really inexpensive and you can have a very good looking professional website.
There are so many different areas of improvement that we all can take advantage of and the list that I gave doesn’t even cover a fraction of them. I hope that you find the information useful and if you have any other mistakes or tips that could help us artists and producers out contact me so we can talk about it.
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