Everything You Need to Know About the Music Business & Industry (From A-Z)

As we all know, the music industry is highly competitive. Just because you know a lot about music or have incredible talent doesn’t automatically mean that you are going to be successful. There are many other aspects of the business such as a brand development, marketing, and networking.

You certainly need to be be passionate and an expert musician, but it will be business savvy that will carry you to stardom. Once you get some some fans, you will need working relationships with retailers, distributors, and record labels. You can read books and a blogs about it how that works, but at a certain point, you just need to give it a try and learn as you go (another option is hiring a manager or agent to help you through the business of getting famous, but it'll be tough finding someone willing to support an artist without fans).

The ultimate goal is to access these three common revenue streams for a musician: touring, publishing, and branding. That’s how you will make a career in today’s music industry.

A big misconception is that positive reviews are all that you need to be successful. If you aren’t getting feedback from your fans, many artists purchase promotion campaigns to build momentum for their music and reach more people.

A growing audience is the best kind of audience.

Reviews can generate interest in your music, but it's still not the golden ticket to success. You need to leverage reviews and attention to attract managers and labels to your music. Huge, career altering audiences come with labels, so always keep them in your sights. You can get some sales by taking an independent approach, but record labels are still the best way to get your music distributed and marketed.

When you decide you want to be a musician, you become a business. You and your music are the product. Social networking is one of the best ways for independent artists to spread word about their music, but the problem is that this won’t be enough on its own to help you achieve your goals.

Social media can be an effective tool to market yourself as an independent musician, but this is just part of the plan you need to have in place in order to be successful. Create a brand for yourself and market this brand as you would in any other business

You are not going to be famous overnight. You are not going to become rich overnight. If you are going to be successful in the music business and industry, you are going to have to put in a lot of hard work. It doesn’t matter if you are going to be a producer or a singer or anything in between. Once you decide the direction you want to head, get to work. It takes consistent, high-quality content to develop a following. You need to put in the time and the effort to know the ins and outs of this business to have the best shot at achieving success.