The Top 5 Most Common Mistakes Made By New Artists
So you have decided that you want to pursue a career in the music industry as a rapper. You have spent countless nights dreaming of the perfect life, not having to work a typical 9-5 job and making a comfortable living off your passion and doing what you love most. So, where does the adventure start? This post will highlight the 5 most common mistakes that artists make on the rise.
No Financial Backing
Sadly, the life of the rapper isn’t as cheap as we would initially think. Like any business, you have to invest in your craft, and also your time. As lovely as it would be, money doesn’t flood in overnight after simply uploading a track to band-camp with a “buy link”. It takes a lot of time to build a strong and reputable brand as an artist, and to expand your reach, it takes monetary investment. The most wise solution would be to get a job, even if its part time work, so that you have some sort of financial backing.
This Is A Business!
This is probably the most common mistake that rappers make, by not treating their rap career as a business. To generate a strong income in any type of business, you must have a strong brand image, and offer the BEST quality work which would result in someone paying their hard earned cash for your work. Also, how are people going to find you? Advertising is the answer, and you could probably guess, this can get costly. For example, a good place for a rapper to advertise their work would be the front page of major hip hop sites, such as DatPiff, Coast2Coast Mixtapes, etc. You can sell your music here
There are vast amount of income streams that artists can make money and elevate their business from which require creativity, thought, and most importantly research. An artist should plan out who their target audience is, their interests, fashion trends of their audience, and what would appeal to them. This information can be used in the creation of the musical aspects, merchandising, appearance and shows. This will build a highly targetted fan base who will share interests in relation to what you are actively promoting. Never under-estimate the power of research, its the foundation to your whole business.
Here’s a guide for rappers to make money
Little Online Presence
This is also another flaw that most artists come across, and this issue makes it a lot harder for them to become discover-able. As an artist, being in as many places as possible is essential, and it increases the likelihood of your music being found. Only being active on twitter with 250 followers will sadly not make the cut for creating a solid music career. It is also a good idea to sign up to rap related forums, where you can reach out and connect with other rappers and offer valuable advice to eachother. Here is a checklist of locations where artists should be active :
- Soundcloud
- YouTube
- ReverbNation
- Bandcamp
- StumbleUpon
- Forums
So instantly, you are expanding your potential reach by x9 just by using those websites to create a presence with. Lets just say each of these sources got you 10 views a day, you will generate 90 daily views. May not sound a lot? What if I told you that would accumulate to 32,850 views in a year? Not a bad place to start. As you build your following overtime, these numbers will increase. By using wise advertising investments such as Facebook Ads etc. your presence will grow quicker, and your following will be of much higher quality
Using Tagged Beats
This one is something that’s often overlooked, and doesn’t require much depth, but is one of the most common mistakes that artists make. Ripping beats off YouTube which contains tags every 8 bars isn’t a good look for any rapper, and it really devalues your product. Also, you have no legal rights to profit from these compositions, It is best to keep away from releasing music with tagged beats. No body minds a producer tag at a start of song of course, but not a consistently tagged beat. There are many sources online where you can buy very high quality beats for cheap, and you will be able to make money from!
No Monetization
This is something EVERY artist must have in some form, and there is no excuse not to! Did you know you could earn money from views on YouTube? Simply by uploading your work to YouTube you are entitled to make money. The next question – How? It’s very simple and will take a few minutes to get set up. Once you have set up your YouTube channel, you can enable your channel for monetisation, and link the channel with a Google Adsense account.
For the more serious artists, signing up to a royalty collection society would be a sensible idea, because for each stream and public broadcasts of your work, you will be entitled to royalty payments. Each country has their own royalty collection society, a simple google search will show you the royalty collection society for your location.
Recap
The life of a rapper is something that many envy, being able to live freely and to do what you want, without having to turn up to a 9-5. However what people don’t realise is that is one of the hardest careers to pursue, and requires investment, time, skill and a lot of research. To get started, write up a plan of action, take note of the style of music that you create, and also your content. Next, find a demographic which is most suited to your style of music, and share interests with the type of content your creating. Identify fashion trends, and trends which closely relate to those in your demographic. Build your online platforms, brand them with artwork and descriptions, and start building your following. Invest in adverts to target your specific demographic which you want to follow you and become fans. Use beats which you have the rights to use, and ensure that you are monetising your plays!
Here you go, the 5 common mistakes artists make on the rise has been addressed!
If you found this useful, please it share with others so they can reap the benefits of this information also.
Also, click here to check our guide on using Instagram to promote yourself as an artist.
Thank you.