#DearArtiste™

Hey! it's good to be back with another PODCAST. this time, i talked about all you need to know about putting your new material on radio, for the very first time.

1. DON'T GET CAUGHT SPEEDING: Listen to the advice already given above. Focusing first on who you need to become is more important to your long term success than focusing on What actions you should take'. Don't get caught speeding through step 1 in order to get to step 2 faster. Who you will become will dramatically influence the results you receive when you are busy doing things in the future.

Firstly, I would like to state here that the term "upcoming artiste" is somehow degrading to young acts who hustle day and night to put out good music, with little or no resources and hype. Sometimes these young acts even put out better materials than the A list artistes out now. The only difference between them and the A list artistes out now is the fame and the recognition. So I would like to address them as "potential star artistes"

I had a conversation with a colleague in the industry at an event last night and he said something quite striking. He said: "there's a reason this enterprise is called show business. It's a SHOW, but it's also a BUSINESS". He then went ahead to say that a lot of artistes concentrate on the show, rather than the business.

Before you sign a record deal and commit the next few years or next few albums to a record label there are a few things you need to know. Actually, categories of record labels you need to watch out for.

They are: The jugglers and the gamblers. unfortunately, a large number of record labels in the country fall into one of the two categories.

There’s a paradox that many young musicians must come to grips with, especially those who want to make a living at it:
If you want to be successful as a musician, you can’t be doing it for the money.
That’s right. The best way to make money doing music is not to care whether you’re making money or not. No matter how broke or hungry you might be at the moment.

Had this in mind for a long time now, but for some reason(s), I am just writing it out as an article. The idea of this article stuck in my head way back when I visited a studio, just to hear young artistes make beautiful music and stuff. This particular guy came up, had 30 minutes studio session and he went into the booth. For the first 10minutes, he was listening to the beat and mumbling into the MIC. He later decided to record, I was craving for something spectacular, but my hopes were dashed when this guy couldn't lace his hook on the beat till the whole session was over, and he had to leave the booth.

As said in one of our previous articles:  "As an upcoming artiste, the ability to promote and push yourself to get heard is the most important skill you can have. If you don't have money to hire PR people to run media campaigns

1. CREATE A GAME PLAN: It is important that you as an artiste, know what you want to achieve and what your plans are, to achieve that goal. Make sure you write down your goals.

2. KEEP YOUR PLAN IN A JOURNAL: Create a system for keeping your thoughts organized. What is important is the paper trail of ideas.

#Dearartiste, if you’ve been on this grind for more than 5 years, and you’re still an unknown upcoming act, you need to consider some things before you get frustrated and throw in the towel.

Before you blame Radio presenters, producers, or the whole world for your problems, you need to take a good look at yourself and do some house cleaning. You need to find out exactly what ypu’re doing wrong. Let me tell you some major problems upcoming acts have, and if you find out you’ve been doing any of these things, you need to adjust asap.