by Tom Hess
Are you waiting for the day when you can earn a living as a professional musician by touring, writing music and releasing your records to thousands of fans? Most musicians never make it in the music industry and end up working full time hours at a job they despise. However, you do not have to accept the same fate!
First thing is first: you need to stop feeling sorry for yourself, get up and start taking action to become the professional musician you should be!
Get your music career going on the right track by following the same approach used by Olympic competitors who succeed on the highest platform in the world for their respective sports. If you have been keeping up with the events of the Olympics, you’ve seen how evenly matched the athletes seem to be from event to event. However, there are always winners and losers… no matter how good an athlete is, they will either get a medal or miss the podium altogether. The margin for error in these events is extremely thin – one athlete may miss out on a medal when they only performed ‘slightly’ underneath the level of another athlete (such as losing a race by fractions of a second, or failing to lift a weight for a single rep less).
For the athletes who come away with a medal, they gain massive popularity amongst their fans/countrymen and end up getting tons of opportunities to sign deals for endorsements or make big money in other ways. For the athletes who do NOT get a medal (for example, someone who misses getting 3rd place by 1/100 of a second in the 100 meter dash), they remain unknown to the general population and lose out on all the opportunities of those who place above them. This can cause them to feel a lot of frustration due to the amount of hard work and effort they put into their training only to come up with nothing.
Like these athletes, you have spent many years to work on your music career. You have very specific musical goals you would like to achieve through your efforts. You do not want to have spent all that time working to reach your music career goals only to end up with a career in some industry completely unrelated to music while others accomplish all the things you wanted to do for yourself. To avoid this worst case scenario, you have to take action to make yourself the absolute best musician for success in the industry. This is NOT something that someone will do for you… no one will suddenly knock on your door because they heard you playing music and immediately sign you to a record deal.
You might be thinking: “What do I need to do to set myself apart from everyone else so I can get all the biggest music career opportunities?” The answer is NOT simply becoming a better ‘musician’ than everyone else. Truth is, musicians who are the most talented are not necessarily the ones who get the most opportunities from music companies. Instead, to put yourself on top of the list above everyone else you must develop a total understanding of how to deliver ‘high value’ while eliminating the ‘risks’ you present for others when they work with you.
All musicians (whether they know it or not) bring various levels of ‘risk’ and ‘reward’ to the other people they work with in the music industry. It is absolutely imperative that you learn your own negative risks and positive assets so you can make yourself into the best candidate whenever a music company (or band) is looking for someone to work with. Hint: this kind of stuff goes far beyond just writing or playing good music.
If you don’t already understand what makes working with you ‘risky’ or ‘valuable’, don’t feel so bad. Most musicians never think about these things because there are no resources you can find anywhere that address these topics specifically. There simply isn’t a list of risks and values in the music business that you can just look up online. Why is this? The values and risks that will lead you to becoming a successful musician are specific to your personality, situation and musical goals. You need to look into what your personal value and risk is in any given scenario. This is why I haven’t merely written down a big list of risks and values here in this article.
To understand this better, think about the Olympian athletes I mentioned above. These athletes face extreme levels of competition where the difference between one athlete’s skills and the skills of another is very small. When one athlete is off by even the tiniest degree in his/her training or mental preparation, this person will end up going home without a medal. That’s why the most successful Olympians do not train by themselves. Instead, they work together with a coach who will consistently keep them performing at the highest level possible so that they do not ‘slip up’ when it is time to compete. By working with a coach, the athlete not only is able to compete at a higher level, but is able to quickly correct any fundamental flaws that would keep them from reaching their goals (something that they simply couldn’t do on their own).
The musicians who become the most successful in the music industry all use coaches in this same manner. Just like Olympic athletes, you will struggle to correct all the errors in your thinking and preparation if you try to do everything by yourself. Fact is, there are so many musicians who are just a step away from achieving great success, but are unable to see a key mental error that is keeping them from fulfilling their full potential. Only the musicians who work with coaches or mentors are able to spot any fundamental mistakes they are making in order to rise above the rest. These are the musicians who reach the greatest success in this industry.
Learn more about the benefits of working with a music industry coach by checking out this article on developing a career as a professional musician.
The bottom line is this: when it comes time for you to develop your music career, don’t go down the same path of mediocrity that other musicians take by working alone. Find a coach who when train you to achieve as much success as possible in your music career. Don’t be satisfied with merely ‘competing’ in the music industry – Go for the podium!
Take this assessment about training with a music career success coach to learn how an experienced mentor can help you reach your unique musical goals.
About The Author:
Tom Hess is a recording artist, composer and a touring musician. Tom also mentors and coaches musicians worldwide to make it in the music industry. Go to his musician development site to get free music industry advice and learn more about the music industry.
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