As a musician, breaking into the mainstream takes a lot of hard work, devotion, and, most importantly, focus.
There are steps that emerging artists can do to help them succeed before they have talent; talent isn’t enough in the music industry, thus these are the essential suggestions that any upcoming musician should know.
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However, despite your talent, you may find it difficult to break through due to several basic factors other than just playing amazing music.
Obviously, before showing it to the public, you must be grounded and tight in your delivery, which simply takes a lot of hard work.
There are churns of labels out there with considerable and promising creatives, but they have yet to break through, particularly unknown labels with no artiste in the spotlight.
I will highlight both the tips for artiste with record label and artiste without a label, those that still seek to have one.
Below are the Essentials tips for upcoming artistes;
Networking
As for upcoming artistes with a label, you’re half baked into the industry, which means your label might lead you through some gigs, like concerts, private parties, media runs and so on.
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Networking is key when you find yourself in this position, connect with every single opportunity, exchange numbers or social media handles to industry playmakers, OAP, TV presenters , show promoters, and others.
If you don’t have a label yet, you can still network with any slight opportunity you have.
When you make friends you expand your network, it helps spread positive energy towards your craft.
Discover your style
Identify and Reflect on your most expeditious style, and embrace the simplest form and not products of conscious effort.
This is simply discovering and sticking in a particular style, it doesn’t mean you won’t be creatively vast but just having a signature.
Your unique style translates into your special grace, don’t follow the crowd or do what works for others, it might not work for you, do what you can do effortlessly.
Engage in a freestyle
The highest form of music creativity comes out from freestyle, it also enables artists to write a catchy song, because most times inspiration casually pop up without meticulous attention.
Freestyling or vibing to an existing song expand your lyrical root, so if possible make covers of your favourite songs of already known stars like Wizkid, Davido, Burna Boy, Olamide, Runtown, Phyno, Falz, Adekunle Gold and so on.
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A quite number of artistes were discovered through a cover of song or freestyle such as Mayorkun, Starboyterri, Davolee, Lyta, Zinoleesky.
Embrace Social media
The remarkable interrelation social media created remains a great enabling factor for upcoming artistes.
Also, more basically for artistes without a label, convert your friends or followers into fans, upload your songs on your pages.
Monetize your content
As for upcoming artistes in this streaming era, you ought to sign up with all the streaming platforms, (Spotify, Apple Music, Audiomack, YouTube, Youtube music, boom play)
Create an account and get it to monetize, share links to your songs on your social media platforms.
Engage in music competitions
There are different kinds of music competitions to enrol for auditions, like, X-Factor, Nigeria’s Got Talent, Nigerian Talent Shows – Celebrity Takes 2, Peak Talent Hunt, Freestyle Unplugged, Nigerian Talent Shows – Dance 234, MTN Battle Of The Year, Nigerian Talent Shows, Star, Amstel Malta Box Office (AMBO), Nigerian Talent, Shows – YouWin, Gift Talent Hunt Show, participate or enroll