Age Is An Asset, Not An Obstacle, To Your Music Success
Music Business Myth Busters - Episode 28: If you haven't made it by the time you're 30, you're not going to make it.
Are you over 30 and still haven't made it as a musician?
Then you probably never will make it…
You're wasting your time even trying…
Your music probably sucks…
You're just not talented enough to have a music career…
You'll never make a full-time living from music…
You're living in a fantasy world…
You're being unrealistic…
It's time to grow up and get a real job…
How many times have you had these thoughts?
How many times have other people said these things to you? It hurts, doesn’t it?
Do you feel like you've missed your opportunity to have a music career because you're in your 30s, 40s, 50s, or even your 60s?
Do your friends and family tell you you're being unrealistic about having a music career, and that it's time to grow up and get a real job?
Do you have fights with your partner about how much time or money you “waste” on music and how you have nothing to show for it?
So many independent musicians (and the people around them) believe these things, and they give up on their dreams. They deprive the world of their art, their unique gift. And the world is a poorer place for it. That's heartbreaking to me. This is a lose-lose situation.
This stems from a common myth that no longer has any basis in reality: If you haven't made it by the time you're 30, you're not going to make it.
Because of the media, we've been brainwashed into thinking that music careers are exclusively for young people. Success must happen quickly and while you're young.
If you haven't made it by the time you're 30 years old, you're not going to make it so you should give up and grow up and get a real job.
This was more true of the old mainstream music industry which was very visually oriented. As the rise of MTV and music videos drove the trend towards younger and more attractive artists, the industry became obsessed with youth and beauty.
With that being said, there are examples of several artists who made it later in life.
Joe Satriani released his debut album at 30. Sheryl Crow at 31. Debbie Harry at 31. Bill Withers at 32. Sharon Jones at 46.
Willie Nelson was 40 when Shotgun Willie came out.
Thelonious Monk released his best-selling album, Monk's Dream, at 46.
Bettye Lavette was 59 when she made it big.
Louis Armstrong was 64 when his best-selling album, Hello Dolly!, was released.
Rodriguez was 70 when he made it in the United States, although he'd had some success touring internationally a decade earlier.
Charles Bradley was 63 when he released his debut album.
Seasick Steve was 67 when he released his first multinational charting album.
Leonard Cohen was in his mid 30s when he released his debut album, was 50 when Hallelujah, arguably his biggest hit, was released; and didn't achieve widespread popularity and acclaim until he resumed touring in his mid 70s.
These are all artists who you have probably heard of.
We tend to think of “making it” as “making it big.” We have an ideal of being a chart-topping pop star who takes the world by storm and appeals to teenagers.
If you're 50 and trying to be a pop idol, the odds are stacked against you; but then the odds are against you even if you're young and trying to be a rock star.
As you get older you will miss out on opportunities to appeal to certain markets and genres, especially if they have younger demographics.
That doesn't mean that success can't happen, but it does mean you need to make some adjustments and realise there's a difference between being a fabricated pop star and developing a career over time where age and growth become assets.
In the new music business, there are many different ways to succeed. You don't need to make it big to make it.
Being a global megastar and appealing to a youth demographic is just one form of success. But so too is having a long sustainable career over many decades. If you're constantly chasing the youth vote by gearing your music towards the high school and college crowd and following the newest trends, you're fighting a losing battle. You'll get diminishing returns because younger music fans tend to be more promiscuous with their music tastes; they're more interested in chasing the latest trends and discovering the hottest new thing. Instead of trying to appeal to teenagers, be authentic about where you are in your life. Let your audience grow with you. Those more mature fans will identify with you more easily because the music you're making will resonate with where they are in their own lives, and they'll be much more loyal and stick with you.
Part of the reason why artists think their age is a problem is because the model of success they're operating from is thinking they're going to be discovered. This is an older paradigm that's less and less true these days. Now artists really need to do the work themselves to make themselves known.
“Making it” doesn't mean getting discovered. It's not getting a big break and having a meteoric rise to fame and fortune. Making it means making it over and over again. It's plugging away every day, consistently growing your fanbase and making incremental steps forward.
Let go of the belief that someone is going to rescue you from your drowning music career and make it easy for you. Instead, take 100% responsibility for your career. If you work hard enough and work smart at the right things, your age won't be a barrier to success.
It does get more challenging as you get older and you have to balance working full time and family commitments with your music, especially if you want to tour. If you're a parent, you probably won't be able to devote as much time to your music career. Although Leah McHenry makes a 6-figure income from her music and is a stay-at-home mother of 5 and homeschools her kids.
Sometimes you have to honestly evaluate where you're at and make hard choices as to if it's beyond what you can give. But that doesn't mean you have to abandon your dream of having a music career. It just means it might look different than what you had imagined. There's no one-size-fits-all approach to having a successful music career in the new music business. You don't have to tour. You can build a successful music career online without ever leaving your house.
Your age doesn't have to be a barrier to success in your music career; it just means that you have to adjust your strategies for better outcomes. There are specific things you can do in your music career to minimise the effects of your age on your potential success.
Knowing your audience is crucial, regardless of how old you are. Use analytics and trending reports to find out who your audience actually is as opposed to who you think they are or wish they were. Use your Facebook Insights, Spotify For Artists, Pandora Amp, your trending reports from CD Baby, Tunecore, or whoever your digital distributor is. This influences the type of merch you make, the kinds of gigs you're trying to book, the social media platforms you use. It will be more age-appropriate.
Ask yourself: What does your core audience want or need? Don't ignore your core audience to try and attract 18 year olds. Speak to them. Take note of who responds to which songs at your gigs and who comes up to your merch table. This is common sense feedback that you can use to make adjustments. When you have this realisation about who your actual fans are, you're not only more likely to have success but it's also more freeing. If your fans are older you can book your gigs for earlier in the evening because they aren't going to come to a show that starts at 10pm or later.
A lot of older musicians use their age as an excuse when things aren't going well for them. Their age becomes a crutch.
Having a defeatist attitude about your age isn't helpful.
One of the great things about the new music business is that your age really doesn't matter. There's no correlation between age and success.
Age and growth are actually assets.
You have more creative maturity, which takes time to develop. It's incredibly rare for an 18-year-old to arrive as a fully formed musical genius who writes timeless songs that appeal to a huge audience.
As an older artist, it's probably easier for to get press because you've got a more interesting life story and more life experience than a 20-year-old.
There's another advantage that you have as an older artist that you may not have thought of.
If you've built up a back catalogue of music over many years, that's a huge asset that you can leverage to build your audience.
There is a perception that if you've put out 10 albums and you still haven't “made it” that you're not very good. I think that's less of an indication about your talent and more of an indictment of your marketing skills or lack thereof.
The more music you put out, the more opportunities you have to reach more people. Just keep writing great music and building an audience. It could be that your first 9 albums don't do much of anything, but album 10 gets people's attention and then they go back and listen to the previous albums. Don't be concerned if an album doesn't connect or have a huge buzz within the first month of release. It's not necessarily that it isn't good; it's that it just hasn't found an audience yet. There may be some things that you need to improve, but leave the album out there and give it time to find an audience.
One of the biggest mistakes artists make is they take down their old albums from online platforms because they feel that their newest album is better. You should feel like you're evolving and improving with each album, but that doesn't mean you take down the old ones because you think they're inferior or embarrassed by them. The artists who really have snowballing success are building a catalogue over time. The listeners who enjoy that older album that you now think sucks still enjoy it and listen to it. If you have something that connects with people, you're removing opportunities for people to pay you, to listen to your music and share it.
Celebrate your back catalogue and leverage it to build a broader audience and success over time. As people's listening habits gravitate toward streaming it means that music doesn't get old anymore. Nobody listens to and enjoys a song and finds out that it was released years ago and then decide they don't like it anymore.
Ultimately, a good song is a good song. If you write a song that people want to hear and sing along to over and over again, it doesn't matter how old it is or how old you are. The song can transcend any stereotypes of age and reach further than you imagined.
If there's a true exchange of value between you as an artist and the audience, your age doesn't matter.