hi how you all doing I'm Shan and we're going to be talking all about artist development so I'm sure as you must all know by now that to be a successful artist in today's music industry requires you to build and develop your own success now this is a huge challenge for most artists so although on the one hand you've got endless opportunities and loads of tools available to help you do this on the other hand you've got a mountain to climb in terms of Learning and Development and with the rise of Independent Artists and the
constantly changing music industry the way that it is today it's more important now than ever that artists really think about their own development and what artist development really means now we get asked quite a lot what artist development actually is and what it is that we do when we coach artists and when we're writing and teaching courses and I think some of the problem is that artist development generally gets used by people to explain anything or any service that's provided for artists to try to help them in some way or another but the modern music
industry requires a fresh and modern approach and idea about what artist development should be so I'm going to try and briefly explain what it is that we do so that you can try and follow some of these basic concepts and strategies to help you develop your own career so firstly let's just clear up some of the various ways that the phrase artist development ised used to describe different types of services back in the old days artist development was something that labels would often do to develop their artists and you can still find these kinds of
services offered by lots of people and this will generally involve something such as recording your music doing glossy photos for you helping you film your music videos and sometimes even some limited promotion help and this all seems great and exciting for artists who might not know very much about how the modern music industry works and these types of development packages can cost a lot of money but the results are generally patchy because they don't fundamentally reflect how the modern music industry works and nor do they focus on you and your Artistry and building your audience
for you and perhaps even more important than this is I don't teach you anything so you're still unable to do all of this for yourself on your next phase of music and the next time around so you haven't learned anything so how can you then build on what you've already done before having said this there are now also lots of modern artist development services that are available to you but most of them tend to focus on trying to maximize your release campaigns so they'll look at the Promotional and marketing side of what it is that
you're doing and that's all well and good and you do need to be doing some of this and although there's lots of ripoff Services out there that you need to avoid there's also some very genuine and talented people and companies that are specializing in providing advice and services that relate to this area of your development but that's the key issue that you need to be aware of is that it only relates to a slightly narrow area of development of a much wider plan and strategy that you need to adopt if you want to make money
from your music then the first thing you need to realize is that you're trying to start your own music business so arst development needs to be intended to help artists build businesses and careers so it's all about longevity and consistency monetization and audience building so for us the approach to Modern artist development is something far more immersive and comprehensive and it covers the entire artist Journey so that's from the creation of your music the development of your Artistry to the release and promotion of your recording boings and everything that goes on around it and everything
in between it and this very much includes the development of you and not just lots of knowledge and list of tasks that you have to complete okay it's about you your music becoming a better artist and then building a business and everything that that involves if you're serious about wanting to build something then this is the only realistic and effective strategy for you to take control and responsibility for your own success and any artist can do this you can do this but it's not easy so if you think about all the things that an artist
will need to do to get to the next level all the things you need to learn and develop and work on okay there's a lot of things that real artist development would need to cover in fact there are so many things that you have to think about learn and become good at there are things that you sort of know you need to develop but there's also things that you haven't considered at all or you didn't even know that you needed to know so the problem is that this is just too overwhelming right there's loads of
things and if you're trying to do this by yourself then it's very difficult so how are you supposed to know all of this or how are you supposed to know what you should be doing and when or how do you even make the right decisions for your music and your situation so it seems very confusing but you can work on this okay so instead of seeing yourself lost in all of this information and lost in a sea of confusion self-doubt and lack of knowledge and it feels like you're trying to navigate towards the music industry
which is like a distant destination sort of Somewhere Over the Horizon okay instead of feeling like that you can instead find yourself a starting point and an anchor to do this you need to visualize yourself at the center of your own music industry you create your own world and music industry ecosystem and your music business that you don't need the whole music industry you're not trying to reach a destination instead you need to build around yourself the things you need to succeed so this allows you to focus on longevity career and development okay it's not
about finding hacks tricks or and quick fixes just to gain streams and follower numbers and all these other random metrics or trying to go viral this kind of thing those are all just strategy of Hope and wishful thinking and yes sometimes these may happen but it won't give you a long-term solution and you won't have in place all the things that you need to build success so artist development should start with your music your music is part of your strategy and all artists should follow a cycle of development and that includes your artistic voice your
Sonic identity and creating a body of work that you can release to build an audience with okay the gravity to your music business is yourself and the art that you create once you've got your music right for you then you can start developing your brand identity and your audience building uh finding your network and Community working on your promotional assets your marketing and your release campaigns and obviously also all of the music industry knowledge that you need to run your own music business and this seems like a lot to do then I'm not going to
lie to you it is but an important thing for you to understand is it doesn't matter if you are not good at all of this to begin with all right you will get better at it okay it's fine to not be great at everything when you're first starting out and this can be a big thing that prevents lots of you from having success okay it all seems so daunting and you feel you have to get everything so perfect that actually it can lead to inaction or it can lead to you over focusing on one small
area Okay so free yourself from this kind of worry right it doesn't really matter where you are now embrace your starting point okay wherever you are now that's totally fine we must have worked with a few thousand artists now and I'll let you into a little secret most artists don't feel that they're there don't feel that they're ready don't feel that they're music's good enough okay worry about all sorts of different types of things make lots of mistakes along the way okay I don't think it's possible to ever feel that you're fully there and it's
not possible that you're going to get everything perfect but what you can do is you can keep getting better you can develop you can progress and then you can see how far you can take this that's the whole purpose of development and building something you're progressing forwards with a strategy and a plan so ensure that that's the difference between you and all the other thousands of artists who are out there trying to make it okay don't assume that something's going to happen for you and you're good enough already and they'll just waiting for that moment
where you're going to get discovered okay instead assume the role of a successful artist and understand that success doesn't find you it's something that you work towards and something that you build you owe it to your future self to give it your best shot stop dreaming about it and take action okay stop thinking that somebody else or something is going to save you from having to do the work and build something okay it doesn't work like that this kind of thinking can be really limiting to your success sometimes you need to get out of your
own way you can be stuck in your own Comfort zones and doing the same kinds of things and patterns of behaviors over and over again what you need to be thinking of is strategic it's growth it's building and it's taking steps forwards and this leads us to another Point are thinking that you can just pay for the services for somebody else to do some of this work for you now the problem with this is that you're not going to understand what it is that they're doing so unless you've learned the pathway of what a successful
artist is and how they become successful you're not going to be able to engage with the services that are out there that can genuinely help you sometimes okay how can you manage your own Affairs how can you negotiate with people how can you Drive what's happening and stay in control of the projects around you if you don't understand what it is people are doing for you and how you can measure whether it's been effective in any way whatsoever you need to be informed enough to contribute to your own success Drive everything that needs to happen
for you and manage your own career okay and that is what we believe underpins how modern artist development needs to be okay and this is what will massively speed up your progress and your development M I hope this has helped give you a better understanding of yourself and your situation and your approach to your career through taking steps and taking action and building something over time let us know if this has been useful for you or if you wanted to contribute to this conversation I wish you all the best with your music out there and
we'll see you next time
