How to accelerate your music career

The bad news is that building a successful music career can take a long, long time. Artists may dream of a big label’s A&R spotting and signing them up on the spot or airplay that kickstarts sales and chart success, but the reality is far more mundane: behind every success story are years of hard work.

But the good news is that you can take steps to accelerate music success. Like anything in life, it’s not just about hard work but about working effectively.

Be a business

When you strip everything away, music is a business. And it’s big business, worth $30 billion a year. Behind artists are agents, labels, and promotors. Getting music to fans brings in digital services where you can submit music for streaming, and the vinyl renaissance means there’s a literal industry pressing all those albums.

Being a business might not be what you want, but taking a little time to think about your objectives, and how you reach them — a business plan, in other words — will be the foundation of your music career.

Get out there

Sooner or later, people need to hear your music. The more you play in public, the more exposure you get. But don’t rely on specific gigs and that dream of a label spotting you. Instead, think about maximising exposure.

The more you play, the more fans you can acquire, the more your fanbase promotes you, and the bigger the venues you can fill. Although you do not spotted at that gig, use each as an opportunity to learn and improve your set.

Promote yourself

Every artist promotes themselves, no matter how big they are. So there is no reason not to do the same. Think creatively about how you can increase your exposure. Social media is a must, and an engaging profile will draw fans and increase influence. But don’t limit yourself to social media.

Keep an eye out for opportunities. And make sure you have material ready to go, whether for a local paper or an influencer. Getting your name out there is often as much about timing and content.

Understand your market

The internet means your audience is worldwide, even if you are the smallest and newest band. And that means even niche musical tastes can have an enormous fanbase. A great music career comes from the effort taken to understand your audience and serving them. It does not mean producing bland or generic tunes but creating a sound you know your fans will love.

Above all, enjoy it

While it seems like hard work, success brings rewards. Musicians are in it for the music, so thinking about it like a business may not come naturally. But you will find is that even if you have to force some of that work, the rewards it brings — more feedback from fans, bigger audiences, and more revenue — will help make the music even more fun.

Using Bliiink to make it all easier

Bliiink is a new streaming service that makes it a lot easier to accelerate your music career. Musicians are familiar with streaming services, but earnings from streaming can be tiny. Spotify, for example, makes $11 billion a year, but pays as little as 0.3¢ a stream. Not a good income if you are only getting a few thousand plays a month and sharing between band members.

Bliiink is different. It is not just a streaming service but a community, a decentralised autonomous organisation, or DAO. It means that Bliiink is secure, controlled by and for a community, where everyone is a member with a stake in its success.

Artists can take control of their profile, sharing what they want, when they want, and get feedback directly from their fans. Fans get to support their favourite artists because they are part of the same community. And Bliiink’s network of influencers and tastemakers can share their knowledge and expertise to shape the future of music. It all means that Bliiink helps musicians get heard and helps music lovers find their next favourite artist.

Bliiink helps accelerate your music career because when musicians succeed, everyone on Bliiink wins. It’s a service run by the most important people in music, artists and fans, and gives both a fairer share..