You got it down! You look good, you sound good, everyone says your hot (no counting your mom)! Now what? How do you start landing gigs? What’s the first step to getting that record deal?

Sell your Music Online – Digital Music

Likely by now you’ve recorded your band playing. If not, well,,,, Find a way.  You might be able to find a small studio that will allow you to record (for a small price), most towns have at least one. Get your songs on a disk and get it in a digital music format like the mp3 or mp4 format. Digital formats are they type you will use to promote your music on the internet.

Make a Band Site

Next make a website to start selling your songs on. By doing a Google search you will find software that allows you to easily use a wordpress blog or other style of website to sell your songs using Paypal to collect the payments. A blog works well because you can also talk about your band, add pictures, talk about your songs etc. and start gaining traffic directly from the search engines. Each person you get to come to your site is a potential fan and music buyer.

Likely you will want to use song clips so people can listen to part of the song to see if they want to buy it. You can link to these clips from Facebook, Twitter and a whole range of different sites to help promote your music.

Music Videos

Finally,  create a video. (more…)

Imagine you living the good life. You’re playing two gigs every day. And in-between the gigs getting served at your beck and call whatever is your heart’s desire. With a shrimp cocktail in one hand and a fresh pina colada in the other hand. Lounging back taking in the Caribbean sun. Traveling the world.

Sounds pretty good, huh? Sounds like the life of a rock star, right? What is it, you may ask. Probably not what you are thinking, not too many people think of making this a part of their career as musician, but as you can see it definitely has a benefit or two.

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Let’s face it, it is not easy to make it as a musician. Sure it is every musician’s dream to make the big time. To go on world tours. To be a rock star. To sell a million copies of an album. Not trying to bust your dreams, but not that many make it.

It takes more than just being a very good musician. It also takes being at the right place at the right time. You could be an excellent guitarist and never quite make it because you were never at exactly the right place.

Hey, maybe some of you will make the big time, but it still could be 5, 10 years down the line. In the mean time are you happy living in you parents basement waiting for your big break until you’re 45 cause you don’t have a real job? Maybe you’re OK with that and your parents don’t mind having a 45 year old child living with them. If that is the case, more power to you.

But, if you’re not OK being jobless, living with your parents until you die, You might be happy to know there are ways of making money as a professional musician without making the big time. (more…)