Top 10 Mistakes People Make When Trying to Become Professional Musicians

If you want to become successful in the music industry, there many things you need to know and do. But even if you get all that right, you can prevent yourself from reaching big success by making critical mistakes along the way (and there are many potential mistakes one could make, when not being careful). After coaching and mentoring many musicians and bands seeking a career in music, the same patterns of false assumptions, problems and mistakes appear over and over again. Here are the top 10.

Mistake #10 - Not having a compelling image that is congruent with your music. Most musicians (and bands) severely underestimate the importance of their image. Yes, music is about 'music', but music business success is about a total package that includes music, image and visual stage show among other things that need to be fully developed in a congruent way.

Mistake #9 - Trying to 'get your name out there'. Although this seems to be a main goal of most musicians and bands, it is the wrong approach to start with. Before trying to be seen and heard as much as possible, it is often more important to focus on 'converting' the people who hear and see you into becoming actual fans. This 'conversion' is the first key to your promotional success, NOT getting seen or heard as much as possible.

Mistake #8 - Believing that social media websites are the keys to online music promotion for musicians and bands. Social media websites are a tool. They are ONE piece of the online music marketing puzzle. Music industry companies (record labels, artist managers, booking agents, etc.) are far more interested in the popularity of YOUR website, not how many friends you have at MySpace, YouTube, Facebook or any other website that you do not own and control. Want to impress the industry with your band's promotion? Build your website traffic.

Mistake #7 - Not investing enough time into building your music career. Most musicians spend most of their time on music, but put very little effort into the many other critical elements needed to make it in the music business. If you are already a talented musician, you should invest at least 50% of your time into starting or advancing your music career. If you are still developing your musical skills, you should still invest around 25% of your 'music' time into building a future music career.

Mistake #6 - Surrounding yourself with people who are negative, lazy and lack ambition. If you are very serious about becoming a professional musician and building a great career in music, then you absolutely must surround yourself with like-minded musicians.

Mistake #5 - Having merely mediocre live performing skills. Many musicians, who are not yet in a good band, put off developing their live performing and stage presence skills. This is a big reason why talented musicians don't get into really good bands that they audition for. Your music may be good, but a live 'show' requires more than great music. If people only wanted to hear the music, they would listen to you at home. Both fans and record labels want (and expect) to see a REAL show. Neglecting this area results in talented musicians and bands becoming quickly forgotten.

Mistake #4 - Focusing on increasing the 'quantity' of fans instead of the 'intensity' of your fans. The 'number' of fans you have should always be your secondary focus (not your primary one) if you want to become successful in the music industry. The fact is, it is not the number of 'fans' that matters most, it's the number of FANATICS which will contribute more directly to your success (or lack of it). This is particularly true in the beginning of a band's music career. Focus more effort on converting your existing fans into raving fanatics. Learn to do this and the number of your overall fans will increase through powerful word of mouth.

Mistake #3 - Not enough cash flow to support your music career. Like it or not, it takes money to build a music career. Even if other people/companies are paying for your record, tour support, merchandise, etc. you still need to have the freedom to pursue opportunities as they come. Sadly, many musicians miss opportunities because they can't afford to take advantage of them.In addition to a decent income, you also need the flexibility of being able to take time away from that income source to go into the studio, go on tour, etc. That is why learning how to teach guitar is such a great way to achieve both if you learn how to become a highly successful guitar teacher.

Mistake #2 - Not enough depth in your music relationships. There's an old expression, "It's not what you know, it's who you know." In music this is often modified to, "It's not who you know, it's who knows you." The truth is, it's not about either. The most important aspect of connections within the music industry is how deep are the current relationships you have now and will develop in the future. You don't want to simply know people or be known, you want people who know you to have a real deep connection with you so that you are always on the top of their mind when opportunities present themselves. Ask yourself, "What can I do right now to deepen my existing relationships further on an ongoing basis?"

Mistake #1 - Having a fundamental misunderstanding about what record companies look for - and expect from new bands. This is a huge topic, but in a nutshell it's very useful to think of record companies like a bank that lends money to people or small businesses. Record companies make most of their decisions about whom they will work with and what the terms will be in much the same way that a bank will determine who they will loan money to and what the terms of the loan will be. Both record companies and banks basically want to see 3 things:

1. How much value do you bring to the deal right now.
2. How much risk do you bring with you right now.
3. How much potential value and risk might you bring to them in the future after they invest in you.

If you want to buy a house, the bank wants to know a lot about the specific house you want to buy and EVEN MORE about YOU. Record companies are the exact same, they want to know about your music, your talent and your band, but they also care as much (or more) about YOU (and your band mates) as people. What about YOU makes a record deal a good or bad investment for them.

Want to Be a Better Musician? - 10 Tips For Playing Like a Pro

To become a good musician takes a tremendous amount of hard work and dedication. Here's 10 ways you can make yourself a better musician and as well as cut the practise hours!

Here's my tips to making the most of your natural ability:

1. Transcribe Music:

Most musicians groan at the thought of transcribing music and it can be a tedious task but it's probably the single most important skill you can develop, apart from practising your own instrument- in fact, it might even be more important!

Since all your muscular movements are guided by your ears when playing (or should be) it's vital that your ability to recognise pitch, rhythm and structure are as good as you can make them. Over time, transcribing music will refine your ears and your ability to understand music. It will make you more confident when you perform, as you'll know exactly what's going on just by listening. My advice is to get a simple audio editing program so that you can easily loop a bar (measure) at a time and then listen with headphones and notate each note that you can hear. When you've finished you need to go back and fill in any gaps.

2. Know How to Practise:

This may sound obvious but very few music students actually practice properly or efficiently and it's not as easy as you might think. Practise should be approached in two different ways, firstly, very slow practise, where you are aware of each nuance and detail - although it's very important to keep the flow.

Secondly practise "playing". By this, I mean that you should play as though you have an audience so that you cannot stop. It's important to NOT THINK-just play. Allow yourself to be absorbed by the music and enjoy it. It can take quite some time before you can easily slip into the correct mental frame of mind for each type of practise

3. Listen to All Music Styles:

Any musician that only listens to one or two styles that they like, is a poor musician. My own specialty is Jazz but I felt that I really learned a great deal about how to play Jazz from listening to modern pop music. This may sound strange but it helped me pinpoint what was missing in my Jazz playing because certain elements more far more obvious in pop. Also my ability to play classical piano was greatly improve when I tried to use the same mental approach that I use when I play Jazz. Ignore the fashions and only listen to good music, no matter what it is.

4. Play With Other Musicians:

Most aspiring musicians are only too happy to get together to play whether there's an audience or not. You really want to be playing with people that are slightly better than you. As you improve you'll find that either your fellow musicians improve with you or you'll meet other, better musicians who'll want to play with you.

5. Learn the Piano:

The piano is a vital instrument if you want to understand harmony. You don't need to develop a great technique but you should put time into learning harmony. Most musicians I meet that don't play the piano, really regret it.

6. Practice for no more than 4 hours per day:

This is important- I spent a lot of time when I was younger, practising 8 hours a day but I really think that 50% of that was a waste of time and possibly detrimental.

Your practise needs to be concentrated but then you need to leave music alone and do something else in order to forget about it. During this time your mind can relax and the mental images tend to fix themselves in your mind like an image fixes itself on a photographic plate. Anything more than 4 hours a day is likely to be detrimental to your muscles, your mind and your social life.

7. Keep going!:

When I was first starting out as a musician I felt that I wanted to give up on many occasions. What surprises me is that when I've spoken to some great professional players, they also had similar thoughts about their own career. I couldn't believe that such gifted musicians would have wanted to give up but what's more important than raw ability - is hard work and perseverance.

8. Learn to read music:

The amount of great musicians I know that can only play by ear is frustrating because they minimize their opportunity for work. These musicians always regret the fact that they didn't learn to read when they were younger.

9. Learn to Play by Ear:

The amount of great musicians I know that can only read and not play by ear is also frustrating because they minimize their opportunity for work

10. Enjoy your Music:

Let's face it - music should be though provoking, uplifting and enjoyable- so enjoy it.

Focus more on getting the feeling across to the audience and less on the playing the right notes and I guarantee that you'll probably make less mistakes and the audience won't notice the ones that you might make!