Success in the music business is a marathon, not a sprint. It takes a lot of perseverance, determination, and drive to be successful. It's helpful to think of the music industry as a pyramid. Every musician has to start from the bottom and work their way up.
The base of the pyramid is huge and filled with every starting musician or producer. Anyone that plays in a band, produces a track, performs live or basically tries to do anything professionally with music starts at the bottom. At the very top are the 1% of musicians and producers which are super famous, rich, and cultural icons. In between is everyone else.
Everyone's goals are different. Not every musician wants to be the 1%, but I do believe there is a place where every musician or producer wants to be. That place is the starting spot to setting your goal.
Once you've sat down and thought about where you want to be then you can start taking steps to make that goal a reality. The best way I've found to reach a goal is setting several smaller goals first.
There is a metaphor about making a mile long brick wall, and the gist of the story is that you don't worry about the wall, you just focus on laying 5 bricks a day. Building a mile long wall seems way to big of a task to be doable, and people give up when the challenge seems too big. Laying 5 bricks a day is possible and doable. Over time if you just lay 5 bricks a day you will eventually have a wall.
The same thing is true about music. Say your goal is to be the 1% and live that type of life. That is a very big goal that can seem overwhelming, but what if you broke that down into something challenging yet doable that you can start doing today.
Instead of focusing on becoming the 1%, focus on what you can do today to advance a little bit more then you did yesterday. If you work on those small gains over time that progress eventually begins to add up. Take this as an example.
If your goal is to get 1000 real fans that are really digging the shit you are doing, keep that number in the back of your mind, but work on what you can do today to meaningfully connect with 5 people. You can do that. Be real, sincere, and share some love. Start really connecting. Don't just spam your link down people's throats but do something that really adds value to someone else's life. Lay those bricks one at a time, consistently every day, and you'll be amazed how far you will go.
The same is true for anything you want to accomplish. Keep the big goal in mind, but break it down. If you are starting at zero, what can you do to meaningfully lay 5 bricks a day towards that goal. If the goal is money to finance your life, typically you don't go from 0 to $100,000 over night. Steve Harvey released an excellent video on this subject which I highly recommend watching.
I want to share a story of a goal I set because I think it will help. My goal was to get my music on Beatport. Pretty straight forward. So I went down the path of making that happen.
To have music available through Beatport, you need to have your music represented by a label or distributor. So the first goal was simple. Find a label or distributor that could make that happen.
I started asking some of the musicians I know, that have music on Beatport, if they could help point me in the right direction. I got a lot of great advice and leads but ultimately that route didn't pan out. My problem was I already released the music, and the labels I spoke with wanted new music.
So after that first step failed, I had to try something different. I started submitting cold demo's to labels that didn't know who I was, and hoped they'd be interested in working with me. I sent out hundreds of demo's to labels currently on Beatport, in what you'd call a "demo blast."
Out of all the them, I only heard back from a handful, but I was getting close. I knew I was about to reach my goal and ended up going with AMAdea. They are more of a distributor then a label but it was exactly what I was looking for and now my music is on Beatport: Michael Musco
I guess the point of that story is to show you a real world example of setting a goal and achieving it. It's not a matter of luck, or some magically thing that is out of your reach. This is shit you can do and you can start doing it right now. I wish you all the best!
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