How to Sustain Yourself While Starting Your Music Career

So you have made the decision that you want to make a living off your music, but as we all know, making enough money to sustain yourself when starting out in the music industry is tough.

It is the reason many musicians never achieve their dream, because starting out is perceived to be too big of a task to conquer. Luckily for yourself, we are here to help!

Here are five tips to help you make the transition a little easier.

---

1 - Don’t Start by Taking the Leap of Faith

Starting your music career is super exciting, but diving into it head first is not the best idea.

Let’s be real, we all have bills to pay and music does not pay those bills when starting out. Rather than focusing solely on music, keep your day job if you have one and if you don't have one, it's time to get one. This will allow you to earn enough money to pay your basic bills.

Due to this, there is no doubt about it, that you will have less time to create music, however, you will also not risk losing it all (your living accommodation, your basic necessities, etc).

Whenever you are not working your day job, you need to be working towards your music career. This means long hours, working smart and staying discipline. Remember, no one said it would be easy, but it will certainly be worth it.

---

2 - Make a plan, stick to it and hold yourself accountable

You will be extremely busy between your day job and working towards making music your career, but that does not mean you can make excuses. At the end of the day, this is an independent journey and the only person you would be failing is yourself.

After a long day of work, you may just want to curl up to a book or watch a movie, so to combat this, make a plan - to do lists are great!

Highlight your goals, long-term, medium-term and short-term. After knowing what your goals are, create a plan on how you will achieve each of those goals, such as daily, weekly and monthly checkpoints - put these into your to do list.

Working towards attainable goals are a lot more fun than working towards the end goal, (which may seem years away), so make sure in your plan you always have something in the near future to look forward to reaching.

Lastly, hold yourself accountable. Goals and having a plan is great, but if you do not meet those goals, you need to be held accountable. Maybe there can be a consequence, such as one week without your favourite food.

---

3 - Treat your music as a business

You probably create music because you enjoy expressing yourself, inspiring people or connecting with others, but let’s be real, to make music your career, you need to make money from it.

One way to work towards this is by treating your music as a business. There are two sides to music, the composing side (or the creative side) and the selling side (or the business side).

When you compose music, focus on your passion, your love of music and any other reason you’re making music, but when it comes to promoting it, you need to treat it as a business. This means, you need to know your data.

What data? You need to know your target market, your financials (and budgeting), as well as your analytics.

Properly knowing and utilizing this information can best help you accurately market towards people that are most interested in your music, without jeopardizing your current finances.

This way you will be able to have the greatest impact with your current resources, to maximize revenue and decrease expenses.

---

4 - Never say no to an opportunity

It is no secret that when you are starting out, it will be tough to get gigs and so it is important to take every opportunity you can.

Despite how small the opportunity may be, it is still a chance to spread your name, share your music and grow your brand.

Also, keep in mind, there is no such thing as free work. Realistically speaking, you will probably not be getting ticket sales from your first gigs, but that does not mean you perform for free.

You can always leverage many things from gigs, such as selling merchandise, selling CDs, gaining connections, which will provide more opportunities and at the very least, gaining new fans, which in the future will be ‘customers’ of your merchandise, CDs, etc.

One “no” ends an opportunity and all future opportunities from that person or company, whereas a “yes” keeps the door open. Remember that.

---

5 - Never stop learning, improving and making connections

The moment you settle in the music industry is the moment you risk being forgotten. It’s a sad truth to understand, but attention spans are shorter than ever.

Therefore, to keep growing your brand, increasing your following and spreading your music, you need to constantly be working towards it.

This involves learning new ways to share your music, new ways to interact with your fans, learning new programs, making more connections, etc.

Study what musicians are doing, find out what is working and what is not. Is there a gap in the market for something you can offer with your music? Experiment and find what works!

---

What would you like us to write a blog on next? Email it to us at info@musicianguidance.com.