How to start a music career

Any time you're feeling discouraged, you can zoom out and remind yourself, "No, I am definitely walking down the right path." So if you've ever felt overwhelmed or downtrodden, a plan is what will pick you up and send you on your way.

There are some basic steps for creating a plan for a music career. The first step is to define your success. In other words, what is your big picture? You can answer this question by determining what your ultimate goal is.

In other words, if money were of no consequence and you could get up tomorrow morning and do anything that you wanted as a musician, what would you do? Would you be a singer? Would you be the lead guitarist in a band, or would you be an Indie musician and play the festival circuit?

Answering these questions will tell you what your end goal is. From this point, you can more easily verbalize what the path looks like. You can also discover what related streams of income are associated with your end goals. Some resources for pursuing income streams are:

• Making music for TV or film

• Writing songs for performing artists

• Playing locally

• Playing for other artists or bands

• Playing corporate gigs

• Becoming a session musician

• Teaching music lessons

• Selling beats/music online

• Producing electronic artists

• Performing as a DJ

Now that you have your big picture and you have a path for income streams, it is time to figure out and focus on your avenues of income. Your avenues of income should be directly related to your big-picture goals.

For example, if you want to make money from sync licensing, find two to three licensing companies, libraries, or music supervisors and focus on them. Build solid relationships with these companies/people and submit all of your music to them. Focus on platforms that can provide your chosen streams of revenue.

After you have your avenues of income, make sure you do small tasks every day that will continue to move you forward. To continue with the licensing example, your daily tasks could be:

• Submit music to a licensing company

• Work on producing a song

• Email fellow musicians to discuss new songs, get feedback, etc.

Continue to make small, consistent steps. These will continue to propel your career forward and often work better than large but infrequent leaps.