Investing Into Your Music Career

[analog socket]

I think having a different set of ears on your music is a great idea, however if you’re a good mix engineer that’ll do. You should focus on making quality music, social media(pics, content), website, music business registration & figure out the budget for running ads. I’m in school now for ENT Business so we’re in the same boat in a sense. The business part is the most important part. You’re on the right track

[fallow trout]

I'm an okay mixing engineer, at best, but comparing it to that of a radio-ready song is where I get pretty antsy about it all. I already do everything myself. YouTube lyric videos, album art, mixing/mastering, designing artwork for Spotify banners, etc. It's really of making a name for myself by making really really high quality music, but idk if that quality is achieveable all by myself with my low-teir equipment lol

[analog socket]

lol. You can get a great quality mix in the box. I’m still working on my mix. I decided to go to school so I can really get better

[fallow trout]

I know, it just takes forever and the end result is often not what I'm really wanting versus what I listen to. I follow tutorials to a T, but its also a matter of having the money for lots and lots of plugins, hardware, etc that takes time to build up. I'm very impatient LMAO

[analog socket]

lol. I guess we all have no choice but to practice patience

[cinder pike]

Honestly unless you have aspirations to get billboard hits on the radio, you can be very successful just running off the internet. Plenty of cover artists for example are plenty successful enjoying what they do.

Don’t be afraid to commission people. There’s tons of great artists, whether mixing, mastering, art, music videos, etc, that you can pay way cheaper than studio productions for the same output quality.

[fallow trout]

I think I'm going to invest a lil bit into the craft this year and see how it goes (in terms of quality + production). Promotion is an easy thing. And if it turns out horribly, oh well

I will say, I hate how business oriented one has to be in order to be percieved as successful. Even big artists right now complain a fair bit about the capitalization of music-- but I guess that's just how it goes right now eh

[cinder pike]

I just prefer seeing view counts as a measure of success. If money can be made in the future all the better. Only compare yourself to yourself

[pine bay]

man this is so true... social media is literally taking over the music industry. I cba to even invest my time in it cse it takes up sm time and gives me no time to acc focus on my music

[warped bane]

so true!

[lucid violet]

Well, at the same time, to show that you're business-oriented can show how well you can navigate the music industry, because put it this way: When you're starting out, you can put yourself in harm's way pretty easily, and being able to know the ropes, know how to market, know how to make the right deals, it's business, and yeah, it distracts from the real thing, the music, but it's how artists survive. They may not break out being more materialistic, but at least they're not stuck behind.

[wintry tangle]

As far as increasing your credibility as an artist, I highly suggest acquiring some sort of music production license or certification. I went to school for this and have met poeople with music degrees who went on to become teachers and band orchestrators, on the other hand I also met people who simply acquired a music production certificate and went on to make beats whilst getting paid by famous artists in LA, in example, one of my classmates from northern california moved to SoCal and notified us at the music program that he was making beats for Whiz Khalifa, getting paid up to 50k per beat doing late night studio sessions.