*When Kendrick Lamar curated the content for the “Black Panther” soundtrack, he wasn’t just making music: he was demonstrating his business savvy. Groomed in the music business by industry kingmaker Dr. Dre, Lamar’s career has been propelled by leveraging business partnerships and multimedia promotional strategies.
Since hitching his star to independent label Top Dawg Entertainment, Lamar has used relationships with top artists such as Snoop Dogg, Rihanna, U2, and his own hip hop supergroup Black Hippy to promote successful collaborations, which is the strategy he used to produce the “Black Panther” album.
He’s also formed winning business partnerships outside of the music industry, such as his promotions for Reebok. He and Top Dawg Entertainment are currently negotiating a publishing deal for his music catalog that could bring in over $20 million, according to BusinessInsider.com.
As Lamar’s career ascent illustrates, succeeding in the music industry is as much about making smart business moves as it is about making great music. To be a successful musician, you also have to be a good entrepreneur. Here are three strategies you can use to build your entrepreneurial skill set in order to give your music career a boost.
Develop an Entrepreneurial Mindset
Entrepreneurial success starts with having the right attitude. Successful entrepreneurs take responsibility for their own success or failure and are determined to overcome whatever obstacles come their way in order to succeed. Instead of letting setbacks defeat them, they learn from their mistakes to become even stronger. This winning mentality is crucial in the music business, where you’re sure to face early obstacles and you can only get ahead through long, hard work.
An entrepreneur who illustrates a winning attitude is Oprah Winfrey. With an estimated net worth of $2.8 billion, Oprah is one of America’s most successful entrepreneurs. She had to work hard to achieve this level of success, and it didn’t come easy. She grew up poor and was molested as a child, and she was demoted from one of her early jobs as a news anchor. But she never quit, because she had the attitude that she was responsible for her own success. You have to get back up when you fall down, and you have to prepare yourself so that when the right opportunity comes along, you’re ready to take advantage of it, she says.
Get a Business Education
Having a winning attitude isn’t enough. You also need to know what you’re doing. The shortest route to knowledge is getting an education. Today colleges across the United States offer specialized music business degrees geared toward helping entrepreneurs understand how the entertainment industry works.
Some colleges offer online courses in music business. For instance, the Berklee College of Music offers an online class in Music Marketing 101. General business courses can also help you learn business principles that you can apply to your music career. For instance, global health and beauty business Amway provides a complete 80-lesson online curriculum that covers every phase of starting, running, and growing a business. Amway also gives you an opportunity to gain hands-on experience putting entrepreneurial skills to use, giving you practical as well as theoretical knowledge.
Practice Goal Setting and Time Management
Learning to set goals and to prioritize your time in order to achieve those goals is one of the most important pairs of skills you need to succeed as an entrepreneur. Setting goals helps you focus your energy and plan your activities so that you’re constantly moving toward success. Time management makes it possible for you to achieve your goals by prioritizing your activities so that you get done what you need to get done in order to turn your dreams into reality.
You can approach goal setting by breaking your goals down into steps, suggests hip-hop musician advice blog Artist Shortcut. For instance, you might set a goal to earn $30,000 from your music over the next 12 months. You can then divide that by 12 in order to set monthly goals, and use the results to set weekly goals. This will let you know what kind of activities you need to take on a daily and weekly basis to meet your goals, such as how many streams of your songs you need to generate per week on Apple Music, or how many concerts you need to play. You can also set marketing goals, such as how many followers you need to attract on Facebook and Twitter in order to grow your fan base.
Succeeding in the music business isn’t easy, but with the right mindset, the right skill set, and the right set of goals, it can be done. Developing a determination to succeed, educating yourself about the business side of music, and getting in the habit of goal setting and time management are three steps you can take that will get your music career headed in the right direction.
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