The trend right now is to fight for attention. The trend right now is that you must continually create content if you want to get noticed.
The loudest voices in the room are selling you on a lifestyle that is not sustainable. We live in a “hustle culture”, where almost everyone is an entrepreneur on some level. It’s become trendy to have “side hustles” and “passive income”.
My observation over the last five years of the music industry can be summarized in one word, unsustainable.
There has been a rise of entrepreneurs and hustlers who are clogging up the industry. Maybe you have seen them. They focus all their energy on content creation and preaching diversity over mastery. They go for quantity instead of quality. They preach sales funnels and doing five different things just well enough to make money instead of focusing on helping people build deep sustainable relationships with their clients. They view people as transactions.
They value branding and social media over actual engineering skill level. They are more concerned with SEO, instead of helping people learn their craft.
These people are not all bad nor are they preaching false information a lot of the time, but it’s really hard to create a sustainable business when you’re learning from someone who makes a living off of selling content instead of music.
One of the main principles that most of these people preach is content creation. They believe the key to getting clients is mass marketing tutorial videos, e-books, tip sheets, trendy instagram posts, and blogs - Toss a grenade into the crowd and hope it hits someone, somewhere.
This isn’t all bad. Marketing is necessary for any business on some level. The problem is by having to create all of this content, you actually rarely have time to do the very thing you set out to do. You have to ask yourself, what is the end goal? Long term, what do you want to do?
Do you want to be a social media rockstar or an actual rockstar?
Most of these principles that you will find in e-books and e-courses come from a scarcity mindset. They preach an idea that you have to have multiple hands in everything, that when one social media platform goes down, you have another one you can then go to. It’s an endless cycle of maintaining an image instead of actually building relationships with clients. It views people as disposable and that there is a limited amount of work for everyone.
Making money in the music industry is pretty simple. I have preached it before, but you really only need about ten consistent clients in the whole world each month to give you work to make a decent wage. It takes time to find these clients, but once you do, there is normally a loyalty and trust that is built that can go the distance.
Preaching to myself…..but if young people in the industry would stop focusing so much on content, side hustles, and trying to learn how to song-write, engineer, produce, mix, master, market, I truly believe we would have far more people who are great at what they do as well as a healthier industry.
Instead of trying to do everything by yourself, spend time on mastery instead of information overload. I run into so many people who think that if they watch a few videos and take an e-course they should have a career. It just doesn’t work that way. It’s a start to a thousand other steps.
I want to challenge those out there to focus on your current clients. I want to challenge everyone out there to let go of the burden to consume more content as well as thinking you’re missing out if you don’t buy someones latest tip sheet on how to make a home studio work.
Choose to invest deeper into your craft and clients. If you don’t have clients, stop creating Instagram posts and writing books on facebook forums and go find a client that may actually be a good fit for you.
Don’t be fooled into becoming a content creator who is an entrepreneur, instead of your actual desire of becoming a legendary engineer, mixer, or artist.
If you focus on mastering one thing at a time, that thing will most likely be the answer to your fulfillment and longevity. It will have a bigger payout longterm for you as a person, mentally, emotionally, and financially.
Fight for depth and quality over quantity. That is how you create a career that you will actually enjoy and be able to sustain. We are going for fulfillment and purpose over likes and follows. Go for clients and improving your craft over content. Value relationships over quick attention and watch your life flourish.
Peace
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