Non-Musician Skills for a Successful Music Career

Today, being a musician requires skills other than musical abilities, and hopefully, melting faces with killer guitar solos isn’t the only thing you’re good at. In order for you to be a successful musician today, you will need utilize or learn other, non-music related skills.

It’s the difference between playing to an empty dance floor and selling out venues. It’s also the deciding factor on whether you get to play that gig, or the job goes to someone less talented, but more successful in navigating their way to the promoter with other skills.

A successful musician understands the importance of promotion and its many benefits. Many musicians are more than capable of self-promotion and, at some point in time, have picked up the skills to do so. It’s virtually impossible to make it on pure musical talent in today’s world, so if you have any of the following non-musician skills, or are willing to learn, you will be able to market your band successfully.

Graphic Design

Graphic design and the visual arts go hand-in-hand with music. Art has, in fact, long been a part of music. Graphic design skills are great to build a physical representation of your music. Things such as a logo and artwork are necessary to building a brand, and building a brand to share with your audience will skyrocket your notoriety. When you see a musician’s logo, either on a sticker, shirt, or social media, it says “I listen to this musician, and you should too.”

Graphic design skills also can benefit you in maintaining your music’s image from a photo and video editing standpoint. Maybe you want to make a music video.Learning or possessing photo or video editing skills will not only give you more creative freedom to create the music video by yourself, but you will save more money as well. Editing photos from your show to put on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to let people know what they missed out on.

Finance

If you don’t have a basic understanding of financial operations, it can derail or possibly even ruin you. Projecting and tracking album sales, budgeting money to press albums, and putting money aside to pay for expenses are all part of managing your promotions.

Tracking your financial income and expenses doesn’t sound like the most rock-and-roll thing to do, but if you can’t keep track of your money you will be in serious trouble and can even be taken advantage of. Successfully analyzing whether your can spend money on that marketing campaign, album presses, or even that new guitar amp can make or break you.

In today’s music industry, promotional efforts are absolutely necessary to get you and your music out to the masses. And promotional efforts require more than just musical abilities. Musicians are more than capable of marketing themselves given the right set of skills—which you already have, or can be very easy to learn. If you haven’t thought to apply your other skills to any sort of promotional campaign, you won’t create the opportunity to grow a fan base, and no fan base means you are playing to an empty dance floor.

Social Media Management

If you’ve read my last post, and unless you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t experienced any social media platforms, you know the power of social media and what it can do for any musician who’s trying to make a name for themselves. If you aren’t using social media to market your music and network with other musicians, fans, and venues, you are missing out on a huge opportunity.

Using social media management skills will give you the advantage to build a rapport with other musicians and venues, coordinate shows, and interact and connect with fans to build a following. It is a great way for you to let your audience know where and when you are going to be playing, if you’ve got new music coming out, and other informative press releases. Before social media, getting your music out to an audience was a struggle, but today, social media has created multiple opportunities to reach audiences all over the world a piece of cake.

Courtesy of Desmond Rhodes

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