Investing - Returning your ROI
Making the most of your money as a musician is extremely important. Returning your investment is however crucial to having a sustainable music career.
Narrowing in on investments, this can be self funded or label funded. For Independent musicians, self funding will be the most practical but, very important to know that any label that decides to support/fund you will also want to make their money back plus more.
Lets talk about ways to Invest:
Investing to create awareness
Investing to Return Investment
Investing to create awareness is a very crucial for any musician but, I'd like to focus on Investing to return your investment on this blog.
Live
The local live music scene is flooded with musicians! Pubs, cafe's and the like shouldn't struggle in this day and age to book quality acts!
Some musicians have played pub circuits for years and have done very well, generating a good income, others have decided to venture into a world of a more attentive audience, playing Theater style venues.
Both Pubs and Theater styled venues can be seriously rewarding if worked well. That said, initially, pubs, cafe's, restaurants may be safer in terms of having no initial spend on hire, marketing etc, the latter has some amazing benefits though! It is all about weighing the costs plus benefits before you decide what works best for you.
Whatever avenue to choose to start or remain in, setting a small portion of your earnings aside can build into some good capital to invest.
The craziness of the digital world
It is quite remarkable how a UK based artist can reach people in say, Thailand, turning them into fans. All that done without ever having been to Thailand.
The digital world has revolutionized the music industry, giving every artist a shot at reaching a global audience.
A crazy world, I have had A&R people tell me; "Digital fans don't always translate to physical audiences", that to me does not really add up but... bear that in mind whilst investing in your digital growth.
The digital world is also always changing and if an expert advises you and say, two hundred other musicians on the same issue, their approach becomes stale.
What are some key digital trends we are seeing?:
1) Different cultures respond differently to audio and video content.
2) Reaching an audience and keeping an audience are very different.
There is so much in the above two trends we can elaborate on but..... We'll talk about them on more intimate sessions. That said, trend number (2) is ignored by many musicians
In closing
As we keep ploughing the music world, lets do it wisely, as it not necessarily the hardest worker that sees success.
Also bear in mind, success is relative... What is success to you?