Doing What You Got to Do

Season 2 Episode 6 There's a lot of suggestions out there about what you *should* be doing with your music career. Whether it's about digging into the latest hot button business topic (hello, music licensing), or just someone trying to push their latest coaching course or method, the market is flooded with advice on what musicians and songwriters should be doing. A lot of this info is pretty decent, some of it is garbage, and some of it is actually really good. But the thing that really ties the whole of it together is everyone's got a slightly different vision of what your music career should look like. Not a lot of it focuses on the truly important question: "What is it you actually want to do with your music?" In this episode we continue our conversation from Episode 5 (Your Weirdness = Your Magic) with a practical business applications of your unique identity as an artist. We talk about how it's really up to you to decide what you want out of your artistic career, if you leave it up to others to decide (or worse, never really think about it in the first place) you will probably wind up in some sort of toxic relationship with your artistic work. That is the exact opposite of what we're looking to do! So putting in some time to strategize what your main priorities are as an artist can be incredibly empowering. Everybody's music "game" is different. We want different things out of life and out of art, and that's a GOOD thing. The key is recognizing what it is you want to do be doing right now. If you can get that straightened out in your mind, you can start to make well-informed decisions about how you're spending your time, energy, and financial resources. So maybe your "game" right now is licensing, so that means you can make choices about whether you should be networking with music supervisors/filmmakers/etc. or working on new live gigs. Maybe your "game" right now is writing and recording a new album, If you recognize that's your game, you can wisely choose whether you're spending all your time trying to get Spotify streams or spend it writing and demoing new songs.  Starting to see the picture? It's mostly common sense stuff, but a lot of artists (myself included) can get easily distracted by the latest, greatest, shiny new way of making money or notoriety in the art world. But just because something is important and working for someone else, that doesn't mean that it will work for you or being important, meaningful work for you. No matter what you do, you've got a limited amount of resources just like everybody else. Figuring out what you're "game" is and looks like to you is one of the most powerful ways you can start to move forward with an artist, because it helps you allocate those resources in the places that are most important to you. It's not necessarily a sexy, exciting conversation, but it's an important one. One that, if you get this stuff figured out, can really help grow your career as an artist. The Honest Songwriter Podcast is 15-20 minutes of regular, open conversation about songwriting, what it's like to be a songwriter, and how to keep improving at the craft of songwriting. New episodes every three weeks!