Getting a record deal can be easy to do with proper planning. There are many experienced professionals in the music biz who will tell you that the music biz is all business. I agree. With any business, proper planning is the key to success in the music biz. This article describes some simple steps to plan your success.
Think of your career as a business. Have you assembled your business plan? How do you plan to market? What is your mission statement? Are you going to start your own record label to be distributed by a major, or are you going to use the full service resources of a major label? These are all important issues that you have to have in order to really succeed in the music biz. A music biz plan helps you resolve these issues well in advance.
A lot of recording artists enter the music biz with one big goal “to make it”. These artists see themselves on a big stage in front of thousands of screaming fans, but often that is as far as the planning goes. Artists rarely conduct the planning that it takes to succeed in the music biz.
I’ve yet to speak to an artist who has a business plan. In my experience if you don’t have a business plan, then you shouldn’t plan on being in business. A good business plan will cover your business and legal structure, your marketing model, financial projections, goals, benchmarks and finally what you’ll do after the your career is over.
I’ve met many recording artists who treat the music biz like a glorified hobby. They often don’t have business cards, a website or in many cases, a valid email address. Many more artists don’t have the marketing structure in place that will allow them to get the attention from fans or record labels. Remember that the music biz is all business. If you treat your music career as a hobby then you might as well just play your music for friends and family and be content with people pretending to take you seriously.
Getting attention and interest from record labels is easy if you are on the radar. Many Artist and Repertoire Representatives (A&R Reps) agree that if an artist is making it happen on for themselves (by selling a couple thousand CD’s locally or selling out a 2,000 seat venue) they will get on the major label radar. You can’t get on the radar of the record labels (or your fans) if you are flying by the seat of your pants and living on a prayer.
As a wise person once said “failing to plan is planning to fail”.
