How to become a full-time musician
During one of our recent Friday livestreams on Instagram, our guest, music industry expert and Big Help Music’s Director of Artist Development Dutch Van Spall shared a top-notch selection of advice on becoming a full time musician.
You can read our full writeup of our guest’s advice on our blog here, but for now, let’s dive into his key points.
Building an audience
One of the first things any musician should do is pay attention to the quality of the fans that they have, advises Van Spall.
““If you’ve got 6,000 followers on Facebook, I’m not interested in numbers. If you’ve got ten people on Facebook but they are all there on your posts, and they are buying online concert tickets, and they are paying for downloads, brilliant. They are the fans that you need, they are the fans who actually love what you are doing and put a value on it and want to buy it,” says the expert.
Taking the downs in stride
Whether you are in the music business or any other, it’s a tough road to success more often than not. Sometimes the feedback is not positive, sometimes the income is low.
Van Spall advises to not rely on your lonesome to deal with the downs, but have a team who believe in you and help you with a kind word of encouragement as you are getting started.
“You will take a hundred of ‘Hey, that was great!’s and go ‘Yeah, fine’,” explains Van Spall. “You take one ‘I think you are rubbish’ and that will play on your mind that night. You wake up in the morning, thinking about that one comment, because you give that comment — bad comment — more importance than the hundred good comments. And it’s having someone who points this out to you on a regular basis and says ‘Stop worrying about that, it’s not a biggie, it’s not an issue’.”
Income from multiple streams
Music business works when you can rely on a number of ways to earn money. Van Spall recommends really keeping track of all the licensing and making sure you are getting paid for everything you need to be paid for — small performances, appearances on tracks, licensing fees from streaming or using your music as a background.
Cover sets and other endeavors
Van Spall also explains that it can be difficult to get people to pay for your original music when you are yet unknown. To get more traction in the business, he recommends starting with supplementing the income from making and playing original music with cover sets.
Most musicians start by performing covers on their favorite hits. This is not just a creative outlet, it’s also fun for the audience who enjoy your talent and skill but also want to hear their favorite song.
Busking, playing weddings, events, and commercial are also good ways to start earning money as a musician while practicing and polishing the skill.
Analytics
Knowing your fans is another vital thing for any musician says Van Spall. He urges musicians to look at all the analytics tools both on their social media, but also from their distributors. Knowing the geography and demographics of the fans can really help with understanding their needs, tastes, and preferences when it comes to your music and their ability and desire to spend money on it.
Dealing with the pandemic
Van Spall also touched upon the topic of COVID-19 as it has affected the business so drastically. He explains that playing online shows can be a great benefit for musicians, especially if it’s a ticketed show.
“The best way to find out who your fans are is to sell tickets. The real fans will buy tickets. And Show4me will help you do that.”
