Industry Strategy: How to know when to make your move.

The music industry is crowded with new faces trying to stake their claim. An artist needs to to utilize a well planned strategy if they want attention. Finding a way to stand out is crucial for any indie artist looking to get ahead. Local relevance and social media presence the two of the top three components an artist should analyze when determining the right time to strike.

So what do I mean by “make your move,” and “strike” exactly?  I mean going all in on your marketing campaigns, releasing a project, and begin making money! So now your question is, what’s the third component? Well, of course, it’s the talent level of the artist.

Got talent?

An artist talent might not be the most important component to an artist success, I say as much in this article. However, it still plays too huge of a role to be discarded. An artist ability to make good songs is very important when trying to stand out. It’s even more crucial when deciding whether or not it’s time to go all in.

How do you know if your good or not

This is the tricky part. An artist’s desire to be great, combined with confirmation from close acquaintances may lead some to overestimate their ability. The only real way to tell however is to let people hear it. A lot of people. An artist should release songs on free mediums such as SoundCloud and Youtube and share them. If an artist consistently garners no less than 1K plays on SoundCloud he or she could consider their talents considerable. It’s a simple process, however, it can still be strenuous. I’ve personally witnessed an artist release music constantly for 3 years before getting decent numbers, then again I’ve also seen it done on their first try.

The process

The time in between getting there and trying to get there is called artist development. Artists development is almost a lost art on the record label side now and days as they expect the talent they sign to be good to go. Despite that, this process is very necessary. During this period, artists hone their sound, their songwriting, and their fanbase. Artists should embrace the process and bring out their best selves!

Social media presence

An artist’s following is a good indicator of when to take things to the next level. As long as its organic! That means real engagement and real plays. Paid followers and listens might look good on Instagram but will do little for an artists career. Only real fans can create real success.

What’s a good following?

Determining what is a good following can be a hard thing. The simple answer is to say somewhere between 50-100K. But as I indicated earlier it’s more about engagement than anything else. So if an artist has 30K follower on IG but is averaging, 100-200 likes per post on IG and 80-90 plays on SoundCloud then need to do a bit more work. However, if other artists with the same amount of followers on IG were gaining 9-10K likes per post and 4-5K streams on SoundCloud then it might be time for them to go bigger.

But then again

Why people are engaging with your social media page plays a factor also. For example, if a gamer who posts gaming advice makes a music video that does well, it doesn’t quite mean the same as a pure music artist who does the same thing. That’s because the pure artist’s fanbase is comprised of people who only like him via their music. Where the gamer fans mainly watched out of curiosity. If both where to go and perform at a live event, the pure artist would sell more tickets 10 out of 10 times.

For this reason, female artists must be very careful. A beautiful woman may attract a lot of followers but what are the followers there for? They must be selective in what they post and make sure their audience knows exactly what it is they do.

Local relevance

What an artist means to his/her city or state is the most important thing when they are considering taking things to the next level. Can an artist sell a ticket in their city? Are they known? The streets matter!

For an artist getting the local radio stations, DJs, and artists to like and respect them as a musician will put them on a whole other level. Getting this kind of support will put not only help decide whether or not an artist is ready for the next step, it will make it easier.

Local support means more shows, more exposure, and more connections! For this reason, I believe this building a local presence should take priority over anything else.

What do you think? Leave a comment below.