ForteValley

Let's get started!

So, you’ve decided to take the risk as a musician and venture into the lesser-known field of entrepreneurship – starting your own music business. Whether this means starting a music school or studio; founding a music management agency; or teaching private theory lessons, certain entrepreneurial skills are needed. These skills go way beyond everything you thought you needed to know while being a session musician or an employee.

Here are some of the many entrepreneurial skills that will help you to get your music business started:

1. Business and Project Management 

As a creative, you may find things like admin, filing and finances quite strenuous because you would much rather spend that time doing something creative. However, those tasks cannot be avoided when you’re starting any kind of business.

Successful business and project management refers to the planning and organising of resources, tasks, events and daily duties to ensure that your business stays up and running. And no, this does not mean that you have to do everything yourself. One of the most essential benefits of business and project management skills is that you are able to delegate certain tasks to certain people, and even delegate tasks to yourself, within pre-planned timeframes.

In order to manage your music business well, you need to come up with strategies that will allow you to get things done with ease. The best way to do this is to dedicate time out of your week to tackle each aspect of your business 一 to manage your time, but also to recognise when it’s time to hand tasks over to someone else. 

2. Personal Branding

Personal branding refers to the public’s perception of you, not only as a musician but outside of your career too. Your brand as a musician and a music business entrepreneur goes beyond your skilful musical talents. Let go of the idea that you and your business are two separate entities. Although this is true, to the public, you will ALWAYS be an extension of your company, because your personal brand is the story that you tell the world. So, if you brand yourself correctly, people will be more inclined to gravitate towards you and your business.

In order to brand yourself and your business correctly, you need to be consistent - in your language, your appearance, and in what you have to offer. By doing this, you create a brand identity that stands out and your business will soon become more trusted because of this consistency. Remember, you may have a strong brand, but make sure that you have the musical abilities and competency to back up your brand. You don’t have to be the best, but you need to have musical know-how. Your personal brand is the promise you are making to your target market. If you break your promise, you will break your brand consistency, and this can cause more harm than good.

You can learn more about personal branding for music professionals by enrolling in our personal branding course, here.

3. Marketing and Sales

In the fast-paced world we live in today, it is mandatory to market your business in a way that has adapted to modern times, while still having elements that will set your business apart from the rest. While marketing allows you to present your product or skill to potential clients, sales allow your marketing to start bringing in some money.

The use of social media has spiked over the past few years, and it is currently the biggest and best way to market any business or product. Today, when people hear about you or your business, the first thing they might ask is “What is your Instagram handle?” or “Do you have a website?”.

People will find value in what you’re offering when they see you actively market your business in a way that is appealing to them. It is therefore important to come up with a social media strategy that works well. 

The best strategies are ones that are consistent. Always remember that consistency does not mean that you HAVE TO come up with daily Instagram posts or have a new article on your website every other day. What you do need to be consistent with, is the type and quality of your engagements with your audiences via social media. 

Are you interacting with your clients on your feed? Do your posts allow clients to give feedback and actively engage with you? Does your content serve the audience you’re trying to attract? Is the tone of your content consistent? Does your content properly portray your brand and the service/product you’re trying to sell to your audience?

These are some basic questions you should be asking yourself when you’re thinking of ways to market your business.

4. Networking and Communication

Whether you want to collaborate with another musician or simply need a mentor to help guide you through the beginning stages of starting a music business, networking with others in the industry is extremely important. Networking refers to communicating or interacting with individuals, with the purpose of building a relationship that benefits both parties. Getting to know people in the industry will allow you to learn from them and allows you to know who or where to turn to when you need something to help grow your business. 

To effectively network, you need to improve the way you communicate. Be clear with your intentions when you’re networking with other musicians so that they know exactly what kind of business relationship you would like to have with them and how they too can benefit from you and what you bring to the table. 

Networking with like-minded successful people will also improve your credibility within the industry, as clients will be more open to using your business or service when a person or business that they know and trust, has a good relationship or experience with you or your business. Remember, people like people who are like them.

5. Customer experience

Customer experience is one of the most important skills you’ll ever need to learn when running a music business, yet it is not spoken about enough. It refers to the overall interaction a client has with your music business before any person-to-person communication 一 whether physical, digital or telephonic. 

You may not realise it, but your customers will most likely have an experience with your business on a daily basis. The great thing about the current technological age is that this experience no longer needs to be solely physical. These days people will find you online before they have any personal contact with you. The customer experience therefore includes how they feel when they’re using your website or your social media pages. Is it easy to navigate? Can they make payments online? Are your platforms user-friendly and interactive? These are all questions you should be asking yourself. Think of it this way: the better the initial customer experience is, the fewer customer service engagements will be required. 

Customer service commonly takes place after the customer has had the opportunity to experience your music business. This is where customers give you feedback and ask questions; and where you find out how you can better support them and keep them happy. 

Excellent customer service skills require you to effectively communicate with customers on a timely basis. When setting up a policy document for your business, be sure to add a section for customer service which stipulates things like response time for customer communications, for example, stating that emails should be answered within a certain number of days or hours, or how long it should take for responses to happen on your business’ social media platforms.

The best way to improve your customer experience skills is to put yourself in their shoes. Think like a customer and allow customers to give you open and honest feedback. Whether this comes in the shape of a complaints email box on your site, or anonymous feedback forums, it is important to make your customers feel like they are being heard and taken care of. Always keep in mind that happy customers are returning customers.

6. Financial Management

Many, if not all musicians start out as freelancers who rely on multiple streams of income in order to make a living. You might be in a band, while also producing tracks for singers AND providing music lessons to clients. If this is you, you’ve most likely already gotten a taste of how important financial management is.

Financial management refers to the organising and handling of a business’ incoming and outgoing money, and delegating funds to certain needs and expenses of the business.

When starting your music business, you would have to keep track of your monthly business expenses such as rent/venue hire; software/website subscriptions; how much money will be pumped back into your business (buying new equipment, branding, etc); and how much of that money will be spent on your salary.

Yes, we said it. YOUR SALARY.

In order to stay on top of managing your money, you must make sure that your personal expenses are separate from your business expenses. For this to happen, it is important to pay yourself a salary instead of just using the money you make as it comes in. Doing this will ensure that provisions are made to keep your business running smoothly and will allow your music business to have contingencies in place in case of any financial crises. 

In a nutshell…

Whether you plan to always be the only employee of your business; or have plans to expand and employ a few people to join your team, there are many skills you will be forced to learn in order to keep growing your business. Once you’ve got the entrepreneurial mindset to help you to get your business off the ground, the business skills you develop along the way will ensure that your music  business keeps flourishing despite the challenges that come along with it.

Allow yourself to keep an open mind and keep learning new skills, no matter what stage your business is at. There will always be more that you can learn and there are always new ways to improve your business skills, to further aid the success of your business.