Mistakes Every Musician Should Avoid Making

In our last blog post about the Top 4 Mistakes Most Artists Make, we talked deeply about a couple of things that artists often overlook, and we realized that the list doesn’t end at 4 when it comes to us artists.

Let’s check the following pattern of mistakes a lot of artists make all the time in their desperate bid to make it big in the music business.

Thinking that "Good Music Sells Itself"

40,000 tracks are released on Spotify every day. So many artists think that creating good music alone is enough and will get them the fame and recognition they deserve. Although your musical talent does play a very important role when it comes to making it big in the music industry, it is not the only factor at play. You need to consistently exercise that business muscle to push engagement. Most artists today suffer since they choose to not research effective release strategies that need to be put in place before putting their songs out. Understand this, it doesn't matter how great your song is if nobody gets to hear it!

Spend your time and money marketing your release to the people who would love to hear a song like yours.

When it comes to deciding on marketing strategies, you might also benefit from choosing between releasing your music as a bunch of singles or an album, and we’ve covered that in an entire post.

Not Building an Email List

Building an email list might sound like an ancient concept today, but smart musicians know email is as relevant (if not more!) as your other social media handles. 

But understand this, the average open rate in emails is 30%. To put this in perspective, if you have an email list of 10,000 people, you can rest assured that a minimum of 3000 people will find out that you've released a new song when you email about it.

The logic is simple, social media websites will come and go, but every person on the entire internet has an email address. Plus, no other platform provides that kind of one-on-one connection with your fans. People read emails in the privacy of their inboxes. The message is not on a public timeline or newsfeed. They can ask you questions directly with confidence. This helps build trust and connection.

The benefits of creating an email list for musicians deserve a blog post on its own. So we did one.

Your only goal is to get signed to a record label.

Nowadays, CD sales are just a fragment of the industry’s revenue, and labels are struggling to stay afloat, as their business model is still centered around selling physical copies. While the internet and inexpensive home studios have now offered musicians significantly more freedom than ever, the fact that people have stopped buying music was the first nail in the coffin for major labels, opening the floodgates for artists to become independent. Record labels are becoming more obsolete by the day.

Besides, you’re mistaken if you think record labels are the "good guys”. The majority of signed artists just rack up a bunch of debt to the label instead of getting paid. We don’t mean the Indie labels here, so don’t get us wrong, they are entirely different with different principles. 

The truth is, that a lot of musicians want to get signed because they can’t afford or don’t know how to spend money on marketing. 

Trying to do everything by yourself

Yeah, we know what we just said in the last point. However, this is completely different, and no, you're not an incompetent artist if you're not doing everything 100% yourself.

It's okay to ask for help. You need to understand that the music business has been around much longer than you have and people have devoted their lives to understanding how this industry works. You can solve your problems simply by asking people who've been in the same place you are in right now. 

Don't be afraid to spend your money, for example, on getting your track mixed by a pro, or hiring a graphic designer to sort your visuals. In most cases, time is worth more than money. And speaking of money, a lot of newbie musicians usually try to get work done for free from their friends or family. The problem with doing that is, usually, you aren't getting your money's worth because, well, you aren't spending any money! And because you aren't spending money, people are less likely to deliver on time and you can't push them, because they're doing YOU a favor. This causes a disruption in your release and spending some money can end up saving you a lot of time. 

You can always make more money but you only have a finite amount of time!