Music Monday Tip for indie artists

#musicmonday tip. Build a team. Have coaches. Lebron has it, Kobe has it, Michael had it. Great individuals have great supporting casts who play their roles and coaches to help them develop. Essentially, that's all a record deal is. People who scream "I can't wait to get signed" by all rights are saying, "I can't wait to have a team behind me with all the resources to get it done right." The biggest obstacle indie artists face is not money like most of us want to claim but it’s developing that supporting cast to help you reach your career goals. Truth is it’s a lot easier to find money to support your efforts than it is to find the kind of help needed to generate results.

Often times we have difficulty in this simply because we don’t know a) where to find the help we need b) know what we need but aren’t good at training people or c) can’t afford the pro help that’s available. So our solution is we get our friends to help out who generally have no experience but the key is they need to be just as dedicated to growing, learning and helping as you are.

I’m big on sports analogies because I approach music with the same attitude as an athlete. In my opinion, you have to. There are too many parallels between music and sports. Pros in each field perform at a high rate of energy and professionalism, they train hard, they have an extraordinary talent, they’re focused, self disciplined and goal seeking. Going on tour is no different than a “season” in sports. The only thing missing in music is the head to head competition.

Most of us as kids had posters on our walls of great athletes or great musicians with dreams of being like them, as adults we should research what made them great and attempt to duplicate that.

Who was Tupac’s manager? Who was Whitney Houston’s vocal coach? Who was Diddy’s Publicist? Eminem’s Marketing director? You get the picture. Greatness doesn’t happen just going to the studio all day and recording good songs, your success lies in the hard day to day work that goes into the rest of your project, often done by faceless, thankless people.