The Guitar Player's Resource
Who's afraid of competition and success in the music business? No successful artist is!
Successful artists understand music fans like multiple artists and they go to a number of shows. Successful artists build relationships with the media and each other that create a greater amount of fans, media attention and sponsorship deals. Successful artists realize social media is merely a promotional tool to meeting new fans and finding a common interest to create a bond of support that last for years.
Artists who are not serious will repeat the same promotional strategies hoping for greater results. They will play the same venues where they are grossly underpaid, taken advantage of and they won't seize an opportunity from a successful artist that is trying to help them.
Let me give you an example. If an artist who sells out a venue on a regular basis offers you the opportunity to come to their show, meet their fans, hand out your promo material, collect all the contact information you can, hang out with the press who are sitting in the room along with the person who books the venue, that will pay you at least triple of what you are getting paid per show, would you go? The vast majority of artists who claim they want to be taken seriously wouldn't. Why? They are afraid of success.
While I have heard this over the years from a number of artists, I have tried this out for myself with selective artists and seen the same results! The successful artists are there meeting everyone and working together, the others never leave home.
To become the successful artist you want to be in the future, even far surpassing what you have already accomplished in the past, you have to be willing to learn what works now. Skip losing money to publicists and promo guys that generate paper results and no new fans or revenue for you. The key is to be self-sufficient. Even successful artists on record labels have learned they need to be able to rely on themselves, not the labels, to move their careers to higher levels.
From this day forward you should not be worried about competition from other artists because it doesn't exist. Unsuccessful artists careers are very short. The only thing you have to ask yourself is, how successful do I want to be?
Author Tim Sweeney is head of Tim Sweeney & Associates, who are entering their 18th year of being, "the only true artist development company in the world."
Tim is one of the music industry's most sought after experts and consultants, and has written several influential books including "Tim Sweeney's Guide To Releasing Independent Records".
