How to Make It in the Music Industry: 7 Insider Tips

It may come as no surprise that the first step you need to take to become a music artist and establish a career as a musician is to get your musical skills up to a professional level. This applies whether you’re aiming to make it big as a professional singer, instrumentalist, music producer, DJ, or songwriter.

There are dozens of ways to make money with music. Whichever path you choose, Wiebe’s advice is to focus on honing your skills until you’re so good that people would pay to hear your work.

“There are effectively four phases to a musician’s career. First, they must develop and hone their craft,” Wiebe said. “They don’t need to be the most talented, or even the most skilled in the world. But if they can’t sing on pitch, or if they can’t play their instrument, or if they can’t offer a performance that people would be excited about coming to see, it’s all for naught. A musician must lock themselves up in a practice closet until they’ve got a marketable product.”

An electronic press kit (EPK) is a digital music portfolio that offers a snapshot of a musician’s best work, background, and achievements. Think of it as a kind of resume for musicians. If you don’t have one, it’s a lot harder to get discovered, find work in the music industry, and show talent-seekers what you can do.

EPKs are incredibly versatile. But to give you a general idea of what you should include, here are a few common features of an artist EPK:

• Artist bio
• Promotional photos
• Music videos
• Contact details
• Reviews of your music
• Awards/achievements
• Tour dates
• Links to artist pages on streaming platforms
• Links to social media pages

If you have a professional website already, then this is a great home for your EPK. If not, you can always host it in a shareable Google Drive so you can send it out to potential employers, music producers, and other interested parties.

While it may sound like a lot of work, you can’t skip this step if you want to be successful in the music business. “Pulling together all the necessary pieces (bio, high-quality photos, demos, videos, quotes, contact info, etc.) together in one place can take time, but since an artist will require and use these assets continually, it’s well worth taking the time to compile,” Wiebe advised.

If your goal is to get rich and famous from your music, then you likely already know that you should be creating music that other people would enjoy listening to—not just music you want to make. But you shouldn’t stop at just thinking about what your audience might want to hear.

Getting inside the heads of listeners will also offer you a lot of other insights that will help you succeed in the music industry. For example, it’ll help you get a better idea of how, when, and where to sell your music. You may even get a few ideas that’ll help you get discovered and really blow up as an artist.

“Knowing who your music is for can make a big difference,” Wiebe told us. “Obsessing about your audience offers all the clues you need to craft an effective image, make the type of music your audience will love, identify platforms, magazines, forums, etc. to prioritize in your marketing, and so on.”

Start by getting your music recorded, playing some live gigs, and building connections. You need to gain real-life experience if you want to get into the music industry.

Most importantly, recognize that your music won’t market itself no matter how great it is. In today’s highly competitive music industry, you need to establish a strong online presence, network, and collaborate with other people in the industry if you want to succeed and make good money as a musician. This is just the nature of how the music industry works today.

“While there is more opportunity for musicians than ever, it is very difficult to earn a full-time living from music without drawing upon the worlds of entrepreneurship and marketing,” Wiebe told us. This includes understanding how to brand yourself, attract an audience, and get your music into the hands of the right people.

If you want to work in music full-time, it’s crucial to establish multiple streams of income. You may start out simply by playing a few paid gigs, selling your merch at shows, or earning streaming royalties. Ultimately, however, you’ll want to establish multiple sources of income that complement each other.

According to Wiebe, this isn’t necessarily about adding more to your plate—it’s more about leveraging what you’re already doing and maximizing opportunities. The idea here is to think about ways to amp up revenue from your existing income streams rather than stress yourself out by starting up multiple distinct music side hustles.

For instance, if you’re going to play a gig, you may already be earning a guarantee, a percentage of drink and food sales, ticket sales, or a combination thereof. But on top of this, you can also sell your merch at the gig or even collect the email addresses of your audience members and follow up with them later with attractive offers.

Wiebe’s number one tip for aspiring musicians is to collect contact info from fans as you go along. The more lines of communication you have open with your audience, the more opportunities you’ll have to make money from your music and the better a position you’ll be in to achieve lasting success in the music industry.

“Collecting email addresses is still standard procedure, but there’s no reason not to collect phone numbers and mailing addresses as well,” Wiebe said. “It just means you’ll have more touchpoints with your fans. Without a list and a way to communicate with your fans, though, it’s virtually impossible to keep them coming back.”

Of the “four phases” that Wiebe says every musician goes through in their career, the final one is what he describes as “the most exciting phase,” where you have an eager fan base that will buy everything you put out.

This is the stage of success that every musician dreams of—though according to Wiebe, very few ever make it this far. If and when you do, it’s important that you take the right steps not to lose it.

“At this phase, it’s mostly about delivering what the fans want versus trying many things to figure out what’s going to work,” Wiebe said. While it can be tempting to try to expand your fanbase by appealing to a wider audience, you’ll be better off nurturing the following you already have.