PLAN YOUR WORK, WORK YOUR PLAN: Creating A Map to Music Career Success

PLAN YOUR WORK, WORK YOUR PLAN: Creating A Map to Music Career Successby Peter Spellman, Director, Music Business Solutions


(This article originally appeared in the"Musician's Guide to Touring & Promotion"; June '99 issue)


Scenario 1:
A talented band wants a record deal but their gig schedule is erratic and members' day jobs keep sucking their energies so there's not much left for anything else.


Scenario 2:
A terrific songwriter keeps churning out tunes weekly but they just sit in her notebook while she dreams of someday recording them.


Scenario 3:
A singer and producer team up and record two cuts for release but then realize all the cash has gone to recording and manufacturing with none left for promotion and marketing.


Scenario 4:
A music school graduate with great promise sits in his insurance job cubicle and wonders, " What went wrong?"


Sound familiar?


After fifteen years of working in artist development I've become painfully aware of a tremendous amount of musically-gifted talent being squandered. Some musicians progress in fits and starts--one step forward, two back; two steps forward, one back...and so on. Others are just spinning their wheels, stalled. Still others are going in circles. A few, perhaps the most tragic, are spinning their wheels and going in circles.


What accounts for all this misguided effort? It could be many things: a lack of talent, drug abuse, laziness, etc. But, more often than not, musicians tend to get nowhere because of the absence of a map. A map is a plan that points to your destination and lays out the best routes to get there. Maps give us the "bird's eye view", the lay of the land so to speak, so that our journey toward our destination is discernable and deliberate, rather than haphazard and blind. Singer-songwriter Kelly Pardekooper of Iowa city put it this way: "The bottom line for me is that until I had a plan written down in black and white, I was just swimming in the dark, I had no anchor for my boat, no Felix for my Oscar."


Those planning to be doctors and investment bankers have a fairly clear path to their respective destinations: four years of college, followed by several more years of specialized study, and then onto a"job". The requirements are clear; the maps come pre-packaged. Musicians, on the other hand, don't usually have the luxury of a clearly-defined "job" waiting at the end of their preparation. The musician's map will have hundreds of potential paths, and will be as unique as the life and talent it's guiding.


A music career plan (map) is never written in stone. It should not be viewed as a "constitution-like document" says Michael Futreal of progressive folk-rock band The Offramps. "That's useful for some but as an independent musician whose main hope is to remain flexible while making enough money to simply sustain my music production activities, anything so set-in-stone is sure to fail." Futreal sees his plan as a provisional guideline serving as "an external memory for me in my scattered attempt to balance a day job, a family and music."


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