You may be happy to simply sit alone or with others and jam together making great music, practicing your skills and fine tuning your art, however when the time comes that you want to get serious and move on from being a garage playing band or solo artist to a recognized outfit, a certain amount of planning is required in order to achieve this.
Moving from being relatively unknown to an entity that has their own album, demo, agent and/or record label is not an exact science. Some find it easier than others because of luck, talent or both. There are some elements that you can put into practice that we will outline below, to help you move to the next stage of your musical development.
Depending on what your individual goals are will affect the level of planning and effort that you will need to move forward as a solo artist or in a band. Let’s look at one of the most important first steps that are needed for recognition, distribution and self achievement – creating your own CD, demo or album.
Below outlines some important aspects of planning your first musical project.
- Work out what the purpose is of making an album. Is it for self-satisfaction? To send to record labels? For selling at gigs? For general release?
- What content do you want to include and who is involved in producing it?
- What is the timeline set out for completion of the project? By what date do you intend to send out demos? Who to?
- Who will own the rights to the project? Which of the band will retain the copyright and receive royalties? Will this just belong to the songwriter or split equally between the band?
- Where will the funds be sourced from? Is the project going to be sponsored or paid for by yourself or the band? Having an album pressed will be costly. Maybe you will consider not pressing the album initially and aim for a download structure of the music through programs such as iTunes. This can help gauge the public reaction to your music and help determine if a pressed album is worthwhile;
- What promotion, if any, is needed? Again who will fund these promotions? What types of promotion do you think will be the most beneficial to your project? Will a PR manager be needed? If signed to a music label, do they offer publicity and promotion and to what extent?
- How much time can be given to moving forward with the music project? If is becomes popular are you able to designate time to tour to help promote the album? Will the rest of the band be available for this? If required do you need to give a certain period of notice for any employers?
These points need to be thought of and decided upon before progress is taken towards creating the project and they outline some important factors which need to be taken into consideration when producing your own work.
Every artist has different goals that they would like to achieve with their music. Some would like to be world famous; others are happy gigging locally while remaining in full time employment. Some of the points above will therefore be more relevant to some solo artists or bands compared to others.
When recording your first album or looking to distribute it online, make sure that goals are predefined as this will help you be more focused and help you to achieve them.
Find out more about recording your own first album, click here.
