1st. Draw up a short, medium and long term plan
On the path to learning how to start your musical career, the first thing every artist or band should do is ask themselves the three fundamental questions:

What sets you apart?
Where do you want to go?
What is your audience?

This may seem very obvious, but I assure you that most independent artists I have met had not stopped to think about these questions. Let’s see how you should deal with them buy hsch quality sound cloud plays.

What sets you apart?
The advancement of technologies and the fall of the music industry as we knew it has caused the number of “filters” to be able to create, record and disseminate a musical project to be reduced.

As a consequence, today there is a great saturation of artists and musicians who are trying to find their place in the music scene but don’t know how.

Therefore, the first thing you should do as an artist is analyze your musical project and be clear about what differentiates you . You must know what your virtues are to enhance them and stand out among other artists: you have an explosive staging; you are virtuoso of your instrument; Do you do any live performances? Do you wear any type of uniform or makeup?

Everything that makes you unique and special is the first pillar on which you should build your musical career. Write it down!

Where do you want to go?
When you start any project (musical in this case), you not only have to ask yourself how to start your musical career, but you must know where you want to go with it and what you hope to achieve. That is, you must consider whether you want to be a local artist or if, on the contrary, you aspire to go on national or international tours; If you are going to focus on a specific musical style or prefer to be an experimental artist with your music; if you want to make a living as an artist or prefer to have another main source of income, etc.

It is very important to keep in mind what your goal is to chart a solid path to follow to achieve it.

So that you understand the importance of this I am going to give you a personal example: with my band WAB we were clear from the beginning that we wanted to give concerts at a national and international level. It was a priority objective on our roadmap and we drew up a plan for it.

Well, let me tell you that a year after giving our first concert we were already touring all over the country, and a month later we started our first tour of Europe in which we toured 12 countries in 3 months.

I fulfilled one of my life’s dreams and it was possible thanks to setting goals and working hard to achieve them. Now it’s your turn: where do you want to go?

What is your audience?
One of the pillars of how to start your musical career and make it solid is and will always be your audience. And of course, to get to it, you first have to know what it is and get to know it.

What is the audience to which you direct your music: is it a young or old audience?; Is there a majority of men or women? Do they follow a musical trend that is fashionable or not?

Every detail is important, so segment your audience and learn how to reach them in the best way.

2nd. Create your brand
Often, in the artistic world there is a tendency to avoid talking about money or “selling” the product because it tends to be confused with “prostituting art.” But I will be clear: you must change your mindset and start thinking like a company now . This is for me the essential idea of ​​this entire article on how to start your musical career, since if you internalize this, everything else will come hand in hand, believe me.

Selling a product has nothing to do with “selling out” or with being motivated by financial gain, but rather with showing your art to the public. Art is worth nothing if no one knows about it and since I suppose you want your art to leave the rehearsal room and reach people, you must know how to get it to them. As? Well, standing out from the rest and being attractive to your audience.

You are a company, remember? And every good company must also be an attractive brand for its potential audience . This “brand” is built from two fundamental pillars that will be the first thing your audience will know about you:

Your name
Your logo
Your name
Your name is the first thing that will define you from the beginning of your musical career and the first thing that a fan will know about you. That is why it is important that you feel identified with that name and (very important) that it is easy to remember so that anyone can do so. It should be burned into the minds of your fans.

Your logo
Your logo is the first thing that is seen about you, before your image or your own face. Your logo should be as good as your best song. Most of the great bands have an unmistakable and iconic logo that makes them recognizable at first glance. Therefore, your logo must be visual and, like the name, easy to remember and reproduce.

If you need to create a professional quality logo for your project, but you don’t know how to do it, at Suburban Attack we can offer you services to design professional logos that may interest you.

3rd. Build a good team
An independent band is a complex machine where all the pieces must fit perfectly and work in harmony.

This doesn’t just have to do with being good musicians, but rather knowing how, when and what each person should do regarding all the responsibilities of a band. That is, the roles of each individual who is part of it must be defined, from the drummer to the guitarist, including the friend who helps you sell your band’s personalized merchandising .

Everyone must be clear about their role and what each person’s skills are: who composes better? Who has greater social skills and the “talk” to talk to promoters and close the concerts? Who communicates best with the public? Who edits photos better?

Remember: a good team will go further than just “good” musicians.

4th. Define your image: stop being invisible
As we said at the beginning, your music (your product) can be very good, but if no one knows it and listens to it, it won’t leave the rehearsal room. This, although it seems obvious, is something that most bands seem to forget when starting their musical career.

Let’s think again as a company that offers a product on the market: imagine that you have just built a new guitar pedal that sounds amazing and is the best of the best. The product is good, yes, but you need people to know about it so that they buy it and they can know how good that pedal is.

How is that done? Well, you think that your fabulous new guitar pedal is sold, for example, at Thomann , along with all the other guitar pedals on the market. Your pedal now has to compete with all of them to catch the attention of some guitarist on the lookout for new pedals. What would have to happen for you to decide to click on that pedal and not another? Exactly, it has to get your attention!

Better photos, better design, better comments, better advertising… in short, a better image catches your attention . Well, the same thing happens in the musical world: you need a good image that makes you stand out and attracts the attention of your audience. To work!

5th. Build your own musical proposal
I wanted to leave this point for last so that another of those uncomfortable truths that swarm around the musical world and no one wants to accept are clear to you: your music is the least important thing (at least, initially) in your musical career.

Yes, paradoxically your music is the last link in the chain and, at first, “the least important.” Nobody is going to want to listen to you if your album cover doesn’t stand out from the rest; Nobody is going to go to your concert if your name or your logo doesn’t catch their attention.

This doesn’t mean that your music isn’t important (it very much is), but that it will simply be the last thing the public will notice . Your brand and your image is what will attract your fans, but it will be your music that will make them stay with you or leave. Never forget it!

Now, an artist can invest a lot in image and publicity to attract an audience, but if they do not have a good musical proposal later, that audience will disappear sooner rather than later.

So focus on generating a good musical proposal with which to build a loyal audience. To begin with, it is better to make a repertoire with a few good songs than with many ordinary ones.

Once you have your repertoire, it is important to record it in good conditions and with good sound to be able to advertise online, upload it to streaming platforms such as Spotify or Bandcamp , and publish it in physical format (here you can find good prices for CD , vinyl or cassette editions ). , etc.

On the Suburban Attack website you can find an affordable online stem mixing and mastering service for artists who decide to record themselves at home, but do not know how to mix and master it professionally.

And, again, the most important thing: be original! The first thing is to always have your own proposal and not a copy of your favorite artist. Assume his influences but don’t want to sound like him, don’t want to imitate him… because you will always lose in the comparison. The public is not going to prefer you (the copy) to the original artist. Focus on being the original artist that stands out in your field.