Tag: Setting Goals

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Five Goals Artists Should Have for 2020 [Video]

Goals

With the start of another new year right around the corner, the time to set goals for a better, more productive career is right now.

People have long viewed the start of a new year as an opportunity for change. More diets and exercise plans are started at the beginning of January than at any other point in the year. Likewise, more attempts for better financial planning and creative endeavors begin around the time as well. Setting goals for the new year as December ends is practically a tradition, but without serious change, the next year of your music career is bound to be like any other.

On the latest episode of Music Biz, our music education video series, host James Shotwell shares five achievable goals that all musicians should set for themselves in 2020. These goals are applicable to all areas of music, as well as artists at any level of success. If you are touring the country regularly, we can help you land better opportunities next year. If you are making pop music in your bedroom, we can help you get more fans. Just watch the video below:

Prefer to read? No worries. Here are brief explanations for every goal mentioned in the video above:

Write better songs

The first goal you should have is also the most obvious. You need to write better songs. Every artist needs to write better songs. The best way to ensure successful songwriting in 2020 is by getting into a routine of writing daily. It doesn’t matter if you can commit an hour every morning or fifteen minutes at night, make sure you spend a little time each day working on your writing. Don’t stress about creating a great song each day as much as you do writing anything at all.

Maximize your revenue streams

If you read enough books about millionaires and billionaires, you will learn every successful person has five or more revenue streams. Many artists have at least five (tour sales, merch sales, physical media sales, streaming royalties, and their day job), but there is always room for improvement. Fan clubs (AKA Patreon) can be a great way to make guaranteed money, as can adding VIP opportunities to your performances. Take time in 2020 to review the ways you make money and seek out ways to improve your income.

Gain 100 dedicated fans

We wrote about this last week, but don’t allow yourself to believe you need hundreds of thousands of fans before you can achieve a sustainable career in music. The smartest artists know you only need one-hundred devoted followers before you start seeing progress in your career.

What are devoted fans? You need people who care about you and your music as much as you do. People who will go out of their way to buy tickets to your shows, buy physical copies of your music, and tell everyone they know to do the same. If you can gain a hundred people who feel that way, the next thousand won’t take long to acquire.

Educate yourself

Success is rarely the result of chance. In today’s competitive marketplace, the artists most likely to succeed are those who make time to understand how the world works. Take time in 2020 to study social media, digital marketing, and music distribution. Review the latest trends in business and ask yourself how the efforts made by big corporations could be used in your career. You are a business, after all, so make 2020 the year you approach your job as a professional.

Collaborate and Network

Musicians tend to isolate themselves from others when pursuing their art. Too many artists believe they have to leave the world at large to create something uniquely their own when that is rarely, if ever, true. Collaboration and conversation can provide a better perspective on art and business, which in turn can help you lead a better career in music. Don’t hide from the world next year. Go out and embrace your fellow creatives. Learn from them and share your knowledge. Together, we can all create a better music business.

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Nothing beats a good reminder

You would not believe the number of great ideas that have been forgotten simply because a person or group decided to note make notes.

We’ve been there, so we are sure you have as well. A meeting is taking place and someone has a moment of pure genius that sets the room ablaze with fresh ideas. The power of the group mind springs to life and you suddenly feel excited about the future once more.

Then, inevitably, the moment ends and you each go back to your individual work stations to focus on what is immediately in front of you so that maybe — hopefully — you can get back to whatever new notion had just been the talk of the room.

Nine times out of ten, unless you remember to take serious notes or or immediately put thought to action when a good idea strikes that amazing notion will soon be lost to the annals of your brain. You may be able to salvage of the components, but they will never work together as well as they did when the thought first crossed your mind.

When we encountered problems with a new platform we attempted to launch last year, one of our first decisions was to create several spreadsheets to document our response. We outlined every issue we found, as well as those mentioned by our users. We also made a list of things people said the wanted to see included in any future updates. We made lists of what we could do and what we had no idea how to handle, as well as steps to learning what we did not yet understand.

Every morning our team begins their day by drawing up individual to-do lists. From there, we usually have a group discussion about our company’s current goals and any progress has been made toward meeting them. This helps everyone stay on the same page, and it promotes a hive mind mentality in the office.

The digital age has given us the ability to consume and process more information than ever before, but unless we stop and focus on what is passing through our minds the bulk of what take in is lost almost as soon as it is recognized. In order to maximize your productivity and comprehension you need to take notes, set reminders, and above all else create a plan of attack for your daily life.

James Shotwell is the Marketing Coordinator for Haulix. He is also the Film Editor for Substream Magazine, host of the Inside Music Podcast, and a 10-year music writing veteran. If you enjoy this article and want more stuff like it – or if you hated it so much you have to say something – follow James on Twitter.

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5 Questions to ask yourself before setting goals for the new year

This morning I woke up to learn it was -7 degree Fahrenheit outside. This was not the wind chill estimate, but in fact the actual temperature. It was a moment of horror that soon gave way to reflection because the sheer fact it’s possible for such a cold to set in can mean only one thing, and that is that we are almost to the end of 2016. A new year is less than three weeks away and to be completely honest I am not at all prepared.

Working online is a constant battle between what you want to be doing and what cultural trends demand that you do. Maybe you want to write a daily editorial on something that matters to you, but you also need to exist on social media, actively market your existing work, and plan for what you will do over the next several days, weeks, months, etc. Heck, I spent more than three hours of my weekend scheduling tweets to run during the holidays so that I might spend a little more time with family and a little less staring at my phone (note I said less and not ‘no time at all’ because – let’s face it – that simply isn’t a reality for most right now).

So there I was, avoiding the cold and contemplating the approaching new year. The one thought running through my mind over and over was what it was I wanted to do in 2017 that I have as of yet been unable to accomplish. I’m sure many of you have or will find yourself internally debating this same question in the days to come if you have not already begun to do so. Most of us never thought we could get a foot in the door of this business, so usually we’re pretty happy just to be here in the moment working on whatever is immediately in front of us, but we owe it to ourselves to look up and think about what could lie on the horizon. It took a world of belief in yourself to get this far, so you – and I – can’t stop now.

Here are a few things I encourage you to think ask yourself when contemplating the places you will go in the year ahead:

Is what I’m doing right now making me truly happy?

No one gets into music because they dislike music, but just because you’ve gotten your foot in the door or found a role that helps pay the bills does not mean your journey has to come to an end, or even stall. We have all spent our lives being told that next to no one makes it in the entertainment business, and because of this we have a tendency to not want to risk what little success we have already found. This may be good for the sake of security, but in the grand scheme of existence all you are really doing by not chasing after exactly what it is that you want to do is restricting a part of yourself. You are preventing yourself from becoming the person you feel you were meant to be in order to please someone or some thing other than yourself. That may provide short term happiness, but it will absolutely create longterm regret. 2017 should be the year you focus in on what makes you happy and pursue it with all the strength you have in your bones.

Am I making the most of my time?

Laziness is a disease that infects us all to varying degrees. What few people will tell you is that the extent laziness impacts your life is entirely in your control. Just like how we all have a habit of settling for the first opportunity that comes our way we also have a habit of wasting time we know could be better spent focusing on our goals. Maybe you tweet too much (guilty), or perhaps you scroll Facebook even after complaining to everyone you know about how awful Facebook is these days (also guilty). Maybe you sleep until the last possible minute every morning and rush to work without eating a good breakfast or exercising (guilty again). Whatever the case, there are things you do on a regular basis that deep down you know are nothing more than a waste of time and resources. Identify those elements in your life and set to minimizing them in the new year. I’m not saying you shouldn’t relax, but if you feel something you are doing is not right you need to listen to that sensation and correct your path.

How can I work towards my goals without sacrificing something I need (work/money/etc)?

Reaching almost any goal requires some kind of sacrifice on your part, but you have to be smart about what you sacrifice or else you may get yourself into trouble. If your passions lie outside your current workplace and you have no other way to make money then you probably shouldn’t quit your job to pursue your dream full time. Dreams require money. Life requires money. You have to make sure your needs are met in order to have the mental clarity needed to pursue your passions. I like to say people should sacrifice within reason, or sacrifice what they are able, as long as it does not interfere with their quality of life in such a way that they are doing harm to themselves and/or their families.

What can I do to improve life for those around me?

If your bucket list for the new year reads like the agenda of a person who has the world’s biggest ego then your brain is leading you down a broken path. Happiness in life comes from much more than personal gain. You know that saying about how it’s cold at the top? People say that because they often reach the pinnacle of their personal journey and realize they have left behind the people, places, and things that mean the most to them. Victory doesn’t have to be a lonely thing, but you have to be conscious about your actions if you wish to lift up everyone around you in 2017. Helping others often improves happiness far more than personal accomplishments, and it does so while developing better relationships with those who mean the most to you.

How will reaching my goals for 2017 help me in 2018 and beyond?

Life is about the journey, not the destination, so you shouldn’t be looking at 2017 and thinking it will be the last year you ever have goals. Knowing where you want to be in two, five, or even ten years can help you figure out what you need to do in the coming months in order to achieve your long term goals. Once you reach them, set more and repeat the process over and over again until you die. Life is for the living. Keep your head up, your hopes high, and never let a bad day, week, month, or even year deter you from chasing after the things you want.

It’s important to note that not all goals have to be long term. If you want to eat the world’s biggest slice or pizza or work your way to running a 5k those things can be done in a relatively short amount of time. My advice is to balance the big goals with smaller, more easy to accomplish ones so that completing those tasks will help keep you motivated to fight for the bigger picture.

James Shotwell is the Digital Marketing Coordinator for Haulix. He is also the Film Editor for Substream Magazine and the host of the Inside Music podcast. You should follow him on Twitter.

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