Your Music Career: How to Build an Action Plan That Draws Opportunities to You

Most artists are so terribly distracted by so many things online today that they miss building the right action plan to draw the right opportunities to them. It is super easy to get distracted by social media which can suck the time (and life) right out of you. While social media is an endless opportunity to expand your reach and to market, the obsession with numbers is misguided. Having millions of followers won’t secure making a living off of your music. Followers are not TRUE FANS. On social media, nothing is what it seems and it’s a slippery slope to think that followers translate to success or income when it comes to your music career. Many artists mistakenly put more time into gaining followers (who aren’t even real fans) and their music and career end up suffering to the tune of not even getting off the ground.

Next artists are distracted by music marketers telling them that Facebook Advertising is the answer. Or music licensing programs lure them in with the promise of getting a song licensed by HBO and making thousands of dollars. None of which bring the revenue that they tout. It’s mostly smoke and mirrors. These things plug you into the strategy of “hoping for the big windfall” and take you away from developing an actual strategy and action plan that you need to attain to build your career.

So how do you build a plan for your music? How do you turn your music into a sustainable career? Is it even possible? How do you draw opportunities to you and truly make a living making music? The good news is that it is totally doable and making a living making music is more than possible, with the right plan it is probable.

For 4 decades now I’ve had a successful career in music, first as an artist and secondly as a mentor, and an entrepreneur. I’ve had an inside view of thousands of artists’ careers and I’ve gathered all of the tactics, methods and paths that I have seen work for a variety of artists from a variety of different backgrounds and talents.

I always start with a list of questions to help you determine what you really want. Knowing what you want is half the battle. This is often the hardest part. When I ask artists what they want for their career they usually say one of the following:

“To grow my fanbase”
“To do music full time”
“To support myself doing music”
“I want to connect with millions of people”
“To win a Grammy award”
“To be recognized as an artist”
etc.

All good stuff, but sweeps that are a bit too general and wide, and that requires more information.

Do you really want a Grammy? Or what that would bring?
Do you want to be recognized or the things that would bring to you?

Focus on what that would bring and make a plan to reach it.

Here is where I start. Questions like these get the ball rolling.

1. What is your big dream?

I call it your “WIG”. Which stands for “Wildly Improbable Goal”. We start there to get the juices flowing freely! Just allow yourself to really dream big. What is your biggest dream? If you could, what would be the most amazing thing that you wish could happen to you? What do you really dream about if the sky is the limit? If there is no sky? Write it down.

2. 3 Year Goal: Next write down what would you like to see happen in 3 years?

3. Next, what needs to happen in 2 years in order for the 3 year goal to happen?

4. Then what needs to happen in 6 months in order to reach your 3 year goal? And so on.

At my Label Services company https://ccvm.co/ I build these Artist Plans for artists. I design them to fit the artist, their goals and path. Whether you are a blues artist who wants to be recognized in your genre, or maybe you are a spiritually based artist who wants to open for Deva Premal and sing at yoga studios, or maybe you’re an Americana artist who wants to headline Red Rocks, or a K-Pop artist who wants to perform in Asia? While there are basic similarities, each artist path has different needs and requirements in building the steps and the order in which things should happen.

Here is a sample plan I recently outlined for one of my artists.

Artist Plan 1: Pop, singer, songwriter, dancer
Sound: Pop over hiphop beats with high energy soulful vocals. Performance with full dance choreography and backup dancers
Goal: To build a music brand to perform and tour internationally in Asia and America

Step 1: Create the Artist Career / Business Plan
Step 2: Write for 2 Singles
Step 3: Website, Photo shoot, Bio, Soft branding *start stimulating music socials – cover songs, seed Singles coming
Step 4: Produce 2 Singles + Video 1 (artist is a dancer and needs visual representation for bookings)
Step 5: Release Single 1 – social media ads including Spotify
Step 6: Release Single 2 – social media ads including Spotify
Step 7: Write for EP/LP (also work with MD – put together band, show)
Step 8: Produce EP/LP 7-10 Songs
Step 9: Hard rebrand – Photoshoot for EP, EPK, One sheet, Music Videos (2) – 1 Promo, 1 Live (artist needs “live show” footage for international bookings)
Step 10: Music Marketing Company
Step 11: Release Singles from EP/LP -> then Release EP/LP
Step 12: Industry Introductions – booking agent, manager, label, investor etc. Submit to festivals, conferences, trade shows
Step 13: Artist showcases at international music conferences

To bring any artist to market to build their career and draw the right opportunities to them you will need:

1. The right product
2. The right message
3. The right audience

Without the right product, no amount of planning in the world will work. And without the right message and the full development of that artist.

We need an EP or LP that represents the artist with the high-level quality of songs, vocals and production. The album needs to be extremely well written, well recorded with exceptional vocals and mixed and mastered with a very high level of production quality. Without that, you won’t be able to draw the kind of opportunities to build a real career in music. You’ll need at least a 7 song EP as well. Anything under that is not enough material that is substantial enough to launch a career. A single or two won’t build a career, we need a body of work in order to really take flight.

It all starts with your songwriting. The quality of your songs. You’ll need to write at least 2-3x the amount you will need. In other words – to produce a 7 song EP you’ll want to write 14-21 songs. This allows you to “pick the cherries”. To select the best from the bunch, further improving the quality of your writing and product. We have a process at my label services company where at the end of the writing process, we vote on the songs. This gives the artist some extremely valuable feedback before they choose the final songs for the record.

During the writing process, we put the artist in a program that helps them to dig deeper into the creative process to unlock the messages from their subconscious and tap their creative soul. Every album that goes somewhere comes from a great creative process. Artists like Hozier talk about going into a room and not coming out until they have a record. We guide artists through this kind of a process. We start that process in our Signature Songwriting Circle 6-months Immersion program.

If you have music out that has not yet drawn an audience, it’s most likely that you haven’t written your best music yet.

To find out more about our process click here.