For all musicians, managing your time and money effectively is crucial for success in your career. The music industry can be very competitive and recording, producing, and promoting your project can quickly become costly. While some aspiring artists produce and promote their work with the help of a record label, others choose to do everything on their own. Especially for artists in independent music, it’s important to stay organized both in terms of time and money. A new artist making music needs to learn how to launch their career without going broke! Some artists choose to release new music only every couple years, but for new artists to make waves in the music scene, it’s important to stay active. Staying active means being able to create and release high quality music regularly. This takes time and a certain amount of resources, whether that be financial or personal. The music business is an ever moving machine and it’s important for artists to stay relevant. Here are our top 3 time and money management tips for musicians to stay organized, advance in their music career, and overall, get their music heard!
1. Use AI to Save Time on Certain Tasks
The rise of AI (artificial intelligence) has been transforming a lot of creative industries, including the music industry. While some argue that AI threatens to replace human creativity and the need for musicians and songwriters, we’re here to show you how to use AI in a productive way. The world will always need artistic expression that is rooted in human experience. Music artists can learn to use AI as a tool to enhance their work and speed up certain tasks. Here are some examples of how to use AI to save both time and money on certain aspects of your musical project.
- Music education: Want to improve your skills on a certain musical instrument, develop your ear training, or learn music theory? There are many platforms out there that are AI based and give music lovers innovative tools to learn new skills. Back in the day, learning an instrument and taking music lessons could be a costly endeavor. It’s become a lot more accessible and affordable with the development of new music technology! There are now even AI programs for music performance, like the Yamaha AI Music Ensemble, that accompanies musicians in real time. You can even transcribe sheet-music automatically with services like AnthemScore, MelodyScanner, and ScoreCloud.
- Songwriting tips and music composition: You can use platforms like ChatGPT to overcome writer’s block and and help you write a song. Get feedback and suggestions on your lyrics or new rhymes. Think of it as today’s version of a thesaurus or dictionary. For music composition and arranging, platforms like AIVA and Boomy allow artists to create unique pieces of music based on certain parameters. You can use this as a stepping stone for composing, to spark creativity and speed up certain processes.
- Production tools, mixing, and mastering: Certain AI programs like Spleeter by Deezer now enable producers to extract vocals from an instrumental track with the click of a button. If you want to sample the chorus of a track but only have the YouTube link, this could be a quick and easy way to do so. There are also now AI algorithms that mix and master tracks for a much lower cost than a sound engineer would usually charge. The digital music distributor LANDR and the music promotion platform now offers this add on service to artists who are interested.
Are you looking for a fast and efficient solution for mastering your tracks to make them stand out on streaming platforms? 👉 Give it a try now. - Writing an artist biography or album pitch: Maybe you’re a great songwriter but not so great at writing your own artist biography or album pitch. You can use ChatGPT to help you out! Hate writing social media captions? Don’t worry, you don’t have to.
- Creating visuals or an album cover: If you lack budget or inspiration for creating visuals or an album cover, you can use an AI tool to generate your own images from a text prompt. Diffusion Bee is a free AI service on Mac that you can test out.
2. Develop a Well Thought-Out Strategy For Your Releases
When it comes to releasing your music, it’s essential to establish a well thought-out strategy so that you don’t forget anything or get overwhelmed in the process. Most of all, staying organized and allocating a promotional budget can help you manage both your time and money. A lot of release strategy also revolves around social media planning: new talents can thrive on Instagram or TikTok by having their song go viral and building a loyal following. A lot of people discover and listen to music on these platforms nowadays. Building a strong fanbase on social media can lead to some pretty big career opportunities. Major record labels like Sony Music or Universal Music will look at an emerging artists online presence and often take this into account to sign a record deal.
To organize your release strategy, we recommend keeping an organizational calendar with the following information:
- Release days of your single, EP, or new album on music streaming services
- Social media posts to promote the release before, during and after
- Social media posts of behind the scenes footage and teasers
- Concerts, festivals or small gigs that will generate buzz around your music group
- Promotional campaigns either through Groover, email, or your personal network
Keep in mind that nowadays, there is a lot more content that surrounds the release of a new song than just the audio file. Do you plan to film a music video for the track but are on a budget? Check out our 9 tips for small budget productions. Maybe you can just make a lyrics video or a visualizer? You want to create extra content to accompany the song, EP, or album so that you can share teasers on social media before, during, and after release day. These teasers can also then serve as content for the Spotify Canvas of the track. To keep your visuals organized, we recommend using a file storage system like Google Drive or Dropbox so that everything is in one place. This makes it easy for file sharing as well!
Having strong visuals that tell a story not only enhances your music, but it also can attract attention from music media. If they are captivated by your visuals before they even hear the track, they will be more willing to click and eventually share your music online to new listeners. Developing a well thought-out strategy is also about having a clear vision of who you are as an artist and what you represent. Think of it as merchandising: what message are you trying to send and how can you make that as clear as possible?
Time and money management tips for musicians can be very useful when it comes to the music promotion phase. When it comes to choosing a budget for your music promotion, it will vary from artist to artist. Among all the expenses that musicians can have, we believe that music promotion is near the top of the list, right next to quality recording and production (mixing, mastering). Unfortunately, not all artists can release music and automatically stand out among the millions of songs out there on streaming services. Some bands choose to hire a PR agent to promote their project, but this can become expensive quite fast. Check out our article on how to choose a budget for your release that is right for you. Make sure you have a press kit ready to go that makes a great first impression!
3. Use Groover to promote your music
Independent artists usually find themselves emailing different record labels, music blogs, and more to promote their project. Sadly, they often are left with an empty inbox. These music industry professionals are so solicited that it can be very difficult to get on their radar if you don’t already have some sort of personal connection. The most sure way to contact music industry influencers, get a guaranteed response, and promote your music effectively is by using Groover. Groover allows artists to get in touch directly with music industry professionals– managers, independent labels, tour bookers, journalists, radio stations, publishing companies and more- with a guaranteed response within 7 days. Artists can filter by location, genre, and the type of music influencer they want to get in touch with. Artists who make music across genres- pop, folk, punk, rap, electronic music, hip-hop, classical music and many more) can find the right people to submit songs to. You can even see the potential opportunities they can offer you if they like your track! By using Groover, artists can save time and invest in their project at a lower cost for better results. Send your first Groover campaign here and get your music heard!
Conclusion: Tips for Musicians to Stay Organized
By implementing these top 3 tips for musicians when it comes to time and money management, you’ll be able to stay organized and on top of your game. If you find yourself spending either a lot of time or money on one specific aspect of your project, it may be time to take a step back. Recognize where you can improve your strategy. Managing your own artist development, especially as a solo artist, is a big entrepreneurial endeavor! Overall, if you stay organized and focused, you will be that much more capable of standing out in the music business. Record companies, music publishers, and artist management will be more willing to work with someone who is a sure investment. Showing the music industry that you’re organized and have got what it takes to succeed is a big selling point!
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