How to Get Into the Music Industry & Create Your “Big Break”

Four young musicians hanging out in practice space with musical gear

Author: Tom Stein

Last updated: Jun 21, 2022

Tom Stein is a Senior Professor at Berklee College of Music in Boston. He is a visionary musical entrepreneur, music producer, artist development consultant, arranger, bandleader and performer. Tom is the author of The Business of Music Management: How To Survive and Thrive in Today’s Music Industry, and a member of the US State Department's Fulbright Specialist Roster for global entertainment and music industry.
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Table of Contents

Introduction
Network, Network, Network
Think Critically, Do Homework
Earn Your Freedom To Be Creative
The Art Of Business Is Art

Network, Network, Network

Networking is one of the most important aspects of career success in any field. Of course, it’s great if you are prepared and talented, but if nobody knows about you, you won’t likely have much success. There is a Chinese saying:

“There are many ways in the front door and only one way in the back.”

It’s true WHO you know matters and it’s also true you can connect with the people who can help you in your career. But you have to leverage these connections, which is more involved than it might seem at first glance. Ultimately, you must build relationships with the people in your network. You want them to understand what you do and recommend you to others who might also benefit from knowing you.

Networking is an art form in itself, and it pays to do it well. This will most likely require some effort on your part, including studying how effective networking happens and putting it into practice for yourself.

You should pay close attention to business communications, such as the resume, cover letters, and how to use email and social media to portray yourself in a credible way to others in the music business in order to increase the quantity and quality of your connections.

Is it hard to break into the music industry?

Tom Stein

Hey, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it, right? Here’s a well-known secret: Nothing worth doing is ever easy. If you want to be successful, you’re going to have to work for it, just like everyone else. Of course, luck can play a role, but even if you are lucky and get a “big” break, you will still need to make the sustained effort to stay in the business. And what looks like a big break is always the result of taking advantage of many smaller breaks along the way.

It’s not an easy thing to break into the music business, or any other business, for that matter. But if you are willing to work hard for it over a long time, it is achievable. Since everything else you could do with your career and life is also hard, you might as well choose something you like, so that the time you put in will also be enjoyable.

As Andy Warhol proved, an artist’s creative powers are readily transferable to succeeding in the business of art. This concept certainly applies to music, where we know the skills to succeed include more than just musical ability.

Think Critically, Do Homework

I’ve already mentioned the importance of critical thinking as a desirable outcome of attending college. I also mentioned you should accelerate your learning after school is over by seeking out resources relevant to your career path.

Returning to this idea, I am suggesting you get busy with serious research into areas important to your career advancement. This could include literally any area of interest or practical use. To illustrate, I’ve categorized some potential topics for your research below, loosely based on my own interests (this is not an exhaustive list):

Business-Related:

Setting up your business entity
Starting your publishing company or getting your music licensed
Getting your music into syndication (movies, TV, radio, advertising, etc.)
Collecting your publishing royalties, intellectual property (IP) rights
Behavioral economics (biases, psychology of groups)
Organizational behavior
Setting up your private studio teaching business
Crowdfunding and crowdsourcing
Marketing (psychology of marketing, neuro-marketing, social media skills, etc.)
Sales and selling
Social entrepreneurship
Leadership (could also go under Creative below)

Creative:

Learning to improvise better over chord changes (jazz)
Writing songs
Improving/broadening stylistic capabilities as performer/writer
Arranging your music
Producing your music
Learning to create music videos
Building new musical skills, e.g. music directing, orchestration
Artificial intelligence (AI)
Performance skills, stage and audience communication

This list is by no means all-inclusive. You could add topics that interest you or that you feel will be important to advancing your future career prospects. Keep in mind over time, your interests change and so does the business environment — this means your list of topics will also change and develop in new directions.

The important thing is the learning never stops. You need to be curious and stay busy researching areas of interest and importance. This requires you to be independent and self-directed in your work and also requires self-discipline.

How do I start a career in the music industry?

Tom Stein

Start by doing your homework. That means researching the opportunities that exist, and how you must prepare yourself to take advantage of them. You can find a lot of information online, in blogs like this one, and you can also learn a lot by reading books, (including mine, available Here) attending webinars, or taking courses in a college or university. There’s a lot to know and the sooner you commit yourself to learning, the faster your career progress will be. Don’t let the magnitude of all that knowledge hold you back from getting started. You can start today, and if you’re reading this you are probably already making some progress towards your goals.

Speaking of goals, I would recommend getting serious about your planning. That means setting some specific goals for the short, medium, and long term. Your goals can change as you learn and discover more about the industry, but having goals written down and purposefully working towards reaching them is something that most successful people do, and it’s especially important when you are first starting out.

Ultimately, how you apply what you learned in school, along with leveraging your network of contacts gained there, will go a long way in determining the level of success you can achieve out of the gate and beyond.

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Earn Your Freedom To Be Creative

As Cal Newport writes in his best-selling book So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love (Grand Central Publishing, NY, 2012), what most people want in their work life is autonomy. This means the ability to determine and design your work, when and how you work, and how much.

Another word for autonomy is “freedom” and it is certainly valuable to most. Newport says you need something valuable to exchange for your freedom. That would be your specific skills, what you are good at. He recommends instead of following your passion, you develop skills that are in demand, and you will come to love what you do because you are rewarded for it with freedom.

Jazz Saxophonist Dave Liebman, in his book Self-Portrait of a Jazz Artist (Caris Publishing, 1988), writes musical artists should spend their 20s figuring out what they want to do and get really good at it, then spend their 30s establishing financial independence so they can be free to be creative artists in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and beyond.

Newport’s and Liebman’s advice is similar in that they urge the young artist to build in-demand skills to exchange for freedom in life, in order to work creatively as a self-sufficient artist. They also stress the planning which goes into doing so.

How do you get discovered in the music industry?

Tom Stein

To get “discovered” in the music industry, you should have reached certain milestones. Talent alone is not enough, because even the most amazing talents need to be developed, nurtured, managed, marketed, packaged, and sold. Nobody is going to take a chance on you unless you have skin in the game, which means you’ve already invested in yourself to reach certain levels of achievement.

For example, a label A&R executive I know puts his new music submission requirements right up front on his website. He asks prospective recording artists looking to get signed to a record deal to have all of the following: 10,000 monthly streams on Spotify, a YouTube video with 500,000 views, and proof that they are already earning money with their music through either performances or licensing. This is someone with a proven record of breaking successful new artists, and he won’t even listen to your music if you don’t meet his requirements.

To get discovered, you need to look at every single opportunity as a “break,” because it is. Performing at a fundraiser, attending a music school, connecting with professors or other artists to build a professional network, co-writing songs with another budding songwriter, teaching a music lesson, volunteering to play at a community center, playing at a festival, participating in a battle of the bands, entering a songwriting contest, participating in an open-mic — these are all things that can lead you to better opportunities. If you can grow your abilities and your network steadily, while always delivering on your promises, your reputation will also grow and lead to the likelihood of being discovered and breaking through to greater fame and success.

The Art Of Business Is Art

Some artists might prefer to ignore the realities of the business and focus only on what they want to express with their art. This might be possible if you don’t need to earn a living with your art, but carries with it the risk of obscurity. As Andy Warhol proved, an artist’s creative powers are readily transferable to succeeding in the business of art.

This concept certainly applies to music, where we know the skills to succeed include more than just musical ability. Learning to market your music and brand yourself as an artist is of foremost importance and requires attention, study, and the building of specialized skills and knowledge. Fortunately, you won’t need to do it all alone, as there are many professionals you might attract to your team to help you.

If you look at the advertising materials from music schools, colleges, and universities, they will all tell you mostly the same thing: that they will prepare you for your career and life in music. Although the majority of successful popular musicians did not graduate with a music degree (some don’t even read music), there are still many important things you could learn in a structured music program, plus the connections you can make.

There are also other reasons to attend college, such as proving to the world and yourself that you can complete the challenge and earn a degree or diploma.

Compared to the length of your career, you will be in school for a short time, maybe several years. The question becomes: what is the value proposition for you? What can you take away from a program that will support your career for the decades to come? It may not be exactly the way a school portrays it in their marketing materials.

The answer to this question will depend on the individual but it is an important question to ask before choosing a school and you should keep asking yourself this question during your studies as well. Ultimately, how you apply what you learned in school, along with leveraging your network of contacts gained there, will go a long way in determining the level of success you can achieve out of the gate and beyond.

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