10 Ways To Ruin Your Music Career
- Artist Development
- 27th March 2018
There are many ways to make a successful career in music, and even more ways to ruin one. Here's 10 of the most common ways to ruin your music career.
1) Never Leave Your Comfort Zone.
Never play outside of your hometown. Never experiment with your song writing. But most importantly, never, EVER do anything that hasn’t been done before. Why do anything that makes you nervous, or seems out of the ordinary, when you can follow the same, safe formula that has been done for twenty years. Why risk the chance to catch lightning in a bottle when you can catch tepid milk in a rusty bowl?
2) Don't Plan Ahead.
Be impulsive. Release a song with no promotion. Book a gig for tomorrow when you haven’t been practising. Don’t prepare your songs for the studio. Spontaneity works in the movies, right? The best art is created under pressure, right? They say the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, so why bother?
3) Have No Confidence.
Don’t speak to your crowd on stage. Be quiet at networking events. Don’t stick around to watch the headline act. You totally won’t come across as arrogant at all, you’ll appear as aloof and interesting. This might even find you a solid fan base consisting of your parents and your mum’s friend’s son who wants free guitar lessons.
4) Have Too Much Confidence.
This is an important one. Any artist who has made it big is arrogant and impossible to have a regular conversation with. But you need to be ahead of the curve. Be arrogant from the get go. Demand more money at gigs and shout at what little crowd you did pull for not dancing to your ‘best tune’. Have a tantrum at your label when your song doesn’t make it onto BBC Radio 1. Appearing to not care about your music, audience, career or image are all great ways to make you seem cooler.
5) Be Generic.
This one is vital. We can’t tell you how important it is to rip off every indie band since 2005, and write songs that all follow C F G chord progressions. Wear leather jackets and smoke in your press photos. Better yet, wear sunglasses, keep your hands in your pockets as you sing and sing ‘yeah’ at the end of every line.
6) Write Bad Songs.
The most important thing in music is what? The Music? Wrong. Why write catchy, well composed music when you can cram in two extra syllables on the end of your lines, not have a definitive style and make your vocal hooks as annoying as possible. Of course, what’s good and bad is subjective, so you need to find your own balance of bland, annoying and plain terrible.
If you want to actually write good music (god knows why) then check out our tips for songwriters!
7) Don't Compromise.
If ever an agreement needs to be made that involves you not getting the 100% better outcome, don’t settle for it. If another band member feels they deserve a 50% split of the song you just wrote, just because they wrote the chords, lyrics, beat and hook is simply not acceptable. If you do indeed want to fall flat on your face before your music career hits its stride, make sure that you always demand the better end of the stick. You totally deserve it.
8) Sign Your Souls Away.
As soon as anyone who claims to be from a record label comes along and tells you how much they enjoyed your set, automatically assume everything they tell you is fact. Yes, they can get you on TV and make you famous. No, they will never dampen your creative juices. Sign that deal that allows the label to manipulate your song writing and image and take 150% of your profits, but not lift a finger to help your career. Why not?
9) Don't Take Criticism.
If anyone ever dares to tell you that they think your music could be a little more polished, don’t listen to them. You are the master of your own creation. The art obeys you, not the other way around. You know best. In fact, you should nip this in the bud by making it publicly known that you will not accept any negativity towards you, your music, or your style. You’re an artist, for god’s sake.
10) Be An Idiot.
This is the most important step of all. You have to always make sure that you have no idea what you are doing, and refuse to learn any better methods of doing it. Refuse to accept that you might be out of your depth, and hold your ground until any semblance of respect that you held in the music industry is ground to a fine, bland, irrelevant dust.
If you follow all the advice given in this article, your career will collapse, you will alienate your colleagues and friends, and you will never reach the heights that you dreamed of while playing air guitar in your bedroom. The world will be missing another great artiste. Please, for the sake of music lovers everywhere, do not take this article literally. Please.
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