The Key Mindset Shift To Make More Money From Your Music
In this video, I’ll reveal:
The illusion that holds 90% of musicians back from ever building their fanbase, making more money from their music, and taking their career to the next level. Have you been seduced by this without realising it?
Why having great music isn't enough to guarantee you'll make any new fans or make enough money to survive as an independent artist
The simple reason why 80% of independent musicians fail to make a sustainable income from their music and give up on their dreams in the first 5 years... and what to do about it
The core skill you need to develop that gives you stability and security in your music career. (Fail to learn this skill and you could sabotage your success by driving away your existing fans.)
Why we don't take the actions we need to achieve the success we want in our music careers... and how you can overcome this permanently.
The stereotype that most independent artists subconsciously believe... this makes it almost IMPOSSIBLE for you to make a sustainable living from your music!
The business that you're really in as an independent musician. (Hint: it's not what you think!)
A simple but powerful exercise – that only takes a few seconds to do - that almost GUARANTEES you will make a sustainable full-time living from your music
Imagine this…
You lovingly craft a song; pour your heart and soul into it.
You painstakingly spend hours, days, even weeks getting every note, every inflection, every word, every detail perfect.
You're so proud of it. You think it's the best song you've ever made, by far. You think there's no way it could possibly fail to get attention.
So you put it up on your Facebook page or Youtube or Soundcloud. And then the magic happens…
You get 1000 likes…
People are sharing it…
10,000 likes…
People go crazy for it…
50,000 likes…
It goes viral…
100,000... 500,000... 1 million likes!
People can't get enough of it! You're swamped with messages from people asking when the album is coming.
You even get messages from some of your heroes telling you how much they dig your song, congratulating you on your success, asking if you'd be interested in collaborating with them.
One of the major record labels calls to offer you a record deal with a million-dollar advance to record your album.
You've made it! You're now a legitimate artist with the world at your feet. You're a rock star!
Most of us have this fantasy. We think that the way we're going to become successful artists is by creating music that's so earth-shatteringly amazing that it sells itself, that word automatically spreads like wildfire how good it is, then there's a huge line of people who'll come and find us and beat our door down because they can't wait to throw their money at us. And you've probably even tried this approach.
How's that working out for you?
Probably not so well, am I right?
This is the “if you build it, they will come” mentality, and it's an illusion that holds so many musicians back from ever building their fanbase, making more money from their music, and taking their career to the next level.
The reality is that it's not enough just to have great music, a great product. Art needs an audience. If you have something that can change people's lives, it's your responsibility to find them, not their responsibility to find you.
Most of us as artists don't consider the possibility of proactively going out and getting customers for our music business, and so it dies while we make excuses and blame others - “The music industry is broken” or “Streaming platforms like Spotify are killing music sales” or “people don't buy CDs anymore” or “The economy is bad so people aren't coming to my gigs” or “I can't make money from my music if I'm not signed to a major record label.” Sound familiar?
I've used the term “your music business” a couple of times. That might strike you as weird to think of your music career as a business. If you want to be a professional musician or have a music career, that implies that you'd be earning money from selling your music. In other words, you have a music business. If you don't treat your music career like a business, don't expect a business-like income. So this means that you're an entrepreneur... whether you realise it or not, or whether you like it or not. An entrepreneur is someone who creates profitable businesses and creates value for customers in an innovative way.
The reality is that most businesses fail – about 80% of businesses fail in the first five years, and 80% of the remainder fail in the next five years. If you ask people why their business failed, you will consistently hear a common theme: "I didn't have enough customers." This failure to get enough customers is largely due to entrepreneurs not learning marketing.
You can be the best musician in the world, but if you don’t know how to get fans, your business will not succeed. To build a successful music business, you MUST master the skill of getting fans. Fans are the lifeblood of your music business.
The only time you get paid is when you sell something. And if the only time you get paid is when you sell something, your focus must be on marketing and sales. Marketing is about getting customers for your business. Being able to go out and find, sell and convert customers is the core skill that gives you stability and security in your music business. If you don't know how to get customers, then you don't have security or stability in your music business - it's that simple. And if you don't have customers, you don't have a business. So Marketing is KEY to business success.
As artists, most of us have a paradigm that doesn't include marketing and sales as part of creating success in our music careers. In fact, most artists have an aversion to sales and marketing. They're downright revolted by the idea. We somehow think that it dilutes the purity of our art, that we're selling out, or that it's not cool. You don't have to sell out in order to make money. If you don't value your work, no one will.
The paradox is that most artists want to be successful musicians and make a great living from their music, but they won't go out and get the customers that they need. This stems from a series of mindsets that come from childhood, what we learned from our parents and society, from watching the news and allowing everyday life and culture to unconsciously seep in.
One of these mindsets we learn is a bias against salespeople and marketers. We think of marketing and selling as sleazy, pushy, manipulative, and dishonest. The stereotypical embodiment of this is the used car salesman. It's become a cultural cliché.
The irony here is that when musicians do marketing, it usually looks like what they hate, like the high-pressure tactics a used car salesman would use. Real marketing does not look like what most independent artists do. It's not spamming your Facebook followers or your email list by relentlessly harassing them to buy your album or come to your gigs.
If you don't learn to become a serious, professional marketer, then your music business will never take off, much less have a good chance of survival. And any marketing you do will not just be ineffective or hit-and-miss, but it could potentially do harm by turning your fans off and making them unfollow you.
If you learn the mindsets and approaches of professional marketers and use them in your music business, you'll understand the mind of your customers and what's driving them. You'll be able to consistently and predictably attract fans and grow your fanbase, turn them into paying customers, sell more CDs, digital downloads and merch, and make profit. It's like a money machine that you can just switch on whenever you want. You'll also be able to connect with other professional musicians you admire that you'd like to work with and create much more power and influence in your career.
On the other hand, if you don't learn to become a professional marketer, you won't be able to consistently attract new fans and grow a dedicated fanbase.
You won't be able to turn them into paying customers who repeatedly buy your CDs, downloads, merch, come to your gigs, or contribute to your crowdfunding campaigns.
You won't be able to make a consistent profit from your music so you can quit your day job and pursue your music career full time.
You won't have the money available to record the music that sets your soul on fire the way you want to record it.
You'll have to make compromises to your creative vision.
Commit yourself to learning and mastering marketing. It's the most important thing you can do for the success of your music business and your financial future.
We tend to behave in relationship to how we see ourselves and how we define ourselves in the world. When we identify as something, that label we have for ourselves dictates our mindsets, beliefs, values, behaviours, and habits.
If you identify as a Christian, you're going to think and do very different things than if you identified as an atheist, or Muslim, or Buddhist. Same thing if you identified as a capitalist versus as a socialist, or as a progressive versus a conservative, or Australian versus American versus Japanese versus Palestinian. Or if you identify as a woman, or a man, or a wife, or a parent, as gay, as straight, or as a metalhead versus a rapper versus someone who's into Classical music. If you identify with a label like any of these, there's a clearly defined set of associated mindsets, beliefs and behaviours that you subscribe to. Word choice determines thought choice, which determines emotions and actions.
If we're not taking the actions that we need to to be successful, often the reason why we're not doing them is because those actions aren't aligned with our identity, our self-concept. Usually, we can't just will ourselves to do them. You have to go deeper. You have to address this at the level of your identity.
If you identify first and foremost as a musician, then your mindsets, beliefs and behaviours are probably going to be focused on creating art, not creating an income. Think about it. We've had the starving artist stereotype as our defining paradigm for centuries.
We've been fed this mindset that musicians are poor, starving, helpless, we have to pay our dues, and can't make a living doing what we love. And if you do make money, then you've sold out, you've compromised and adulterated your art and you're not a true artist. We don't do ourselves any favours by clinging to this identity. It's unnecessary and unhelpful as we try to work toward our goals. It interferes with us seeing and acting on the opportunities that are available to us in the New Music Business. The good news is that you can reinvent yourself.
Usually, when we have a goal, it's not actually the goal itself that we want. It's what the goal does for us. It's who we become by pursuing the goal. Ultimately what we really want is to have a transformation. As you go through transformations you're going to notice that your identity transforms. Part of the process of transformation and the bridge that you have to cross is an identity crisis. You're asking yourself “Who am I, what am I supposed to be doing, and what's all of this about?” Because you're going through an identity transformation and it's natural for you to feel anxious.
When you're going to the next level, it's powerful to choose a new name for who you are and what you're doing. If you're moving from having a job to starting a business, you can say to yourself “I'm an entrepreneur.” When you declare that to the world, it can have a stronger transformative effect than anything else you do because it changes the label you have for yourself and your self-conception.
It's really important to realise that every business person is in the exact same business: marketing. You're in the marketing business offering coaching. Or you're in the marketing business offering real estate. Or you're in the marketing business offering electronics. Or you're in the marketing business offering music. If your energy, mindset, actions, and strategic planning are focused on marketing, everything will change.
Since marketing is the key activity to succeed in business, it’s important to identify yourself mentally as a marketer - as someone who proactively goes out and gets customers for your music business. If you've unconsciously avoided learning Marketing or Sales because you had biases or prejudices against these professions, now is the time to change this thought process. You do this by changing your identity.
You are NOT a musician... you are a marketer who sells music.
You can say to yourself: “I am in the business of marketing music.” Or, "I am now a marketer, not just a musician."
From now on when people ask you what you do, answer "I'm a marketer, and I am a musician." Not only will this start changing your mind in unconscious ways and cause you to begin developing your skills as a marketer, but you'll also see the responses that other musicians will give you. They'll probably say something like “That's great. My marketing sucks.” You'll see how much of a need this is and how many musicians aren't paying attention to it.
It's important that you affirm your new identity so it firmly takes root. Create an affirmation for your new identity: “I am a marketer, and I am a musician.” Or, “I am a marketer who sells music.”
Repeat your affirmation to yourself several times throughout the day. Write it out 10 times every morning. Write it on a post-it note and stick it to your bathroom mirror. Whenever someone asks you what you do, tell them “I am a marketer and I am a musician.”
You can start right now by typing in the comments below: “I am a marketer and I am a musician.”
That's going to go a long way to transforming your mindset so you can take the actions that will get your music in front of more people, grow your fanbase, and make more money in the process so you can quit your day job and pursue your music career full-time.