Are you a musician? Act like you own a start-up.

It’s the ultimate dilemma. You’re creative and have infinite ideas on how to push the music landscape to new horizons. However, faster drums, better melodies and vocal bravado don’t seem to get you very far, right? Well, maybe you should start thinking that you’re basically a start-up. Much like any start-up, your album is your product, your music is your vision and your fans are your customers. The best thing to do so is to apply some established rules that start-ups like our, apply on their strategy.

Be prepare to be copied. Don’t start unless you’ll survive imitation.

In general, and according to Sturgeon’s law, 90% of everything is crap. So, don’t think you have a unique sound and that you are the only one able to recreate it. There’s a lot of smart, talented, hungry and tenacious people out there. They’re on top of their game and they just can’t wait for their lucky shot. They keep their eyes open and absorb as much knowledge as they can. So, for the sake of your career, don’t close yourself in your own bubble and keep on your toes. Anybody could just steal your idea and twist it up. You’ll become valueless when that happens.

Build up reserves of energy for bad luck and mistakes.

This is a no-brainer, right? Well, it’s maybe the most important point. Like Henry Rollins (singer of the punk band Black Flag) once said “Have a plan B, C, D and E”. I know it sounds a bit as if I’m killing the dream part of yours, but you have to think this is not a dream. The music industry is a jungle. Highly competitive and with a success rate of less than 10%. You’ll get things wrong on the way. Most of things you’ll do will be wrong, actually. So just cool down and think clearly. There’s no point in getting all hectic about things that are not working out. As any start up, experiment and test. The things that work, repeat them to nausea and things that don’t, drop them. It’ll save you a lot of headaches, and you need that as much of that as possible.  

Figure out how to achieve your goals on a tiny budget — then cut that number in half. 

You’ll be broke. All throughout the journey. The first money that you’ll see will be  maybe after one or two years down the journey. Also, making music takes time and, as business people say: “time is money”. So prepare to work odd jobs and have a reserve of coffee by your side. You’re looking at long hours and little sleep. Very little partying and very little money spending. All that you can spend is in instruments and software. Those are like an investment. Nothing less, nothing more. Think this at all time: “it’s a marathon, not a sprint”. You have to survive today to arrive to tomorrow. Don’t burn all your money now, you’ll need double in the near future.

Prepare to fail, 95% do.

Yes, you’ve put yourself in a bit of trouble by choosing the musician’s path. But, hey, don’t despair. Here at Volareo, we’re building a speaker that streams music straight from Musicoin, a platform that generates more revenue than any other one. Thanks to the invention of cryptocurrency and blockchain, now you can stay assured: we got your back.