How To Become a Successful Independent Artist
Understand the keys to success start with you, lets dive into what those are.

The road to being a successful artist in itself is very hard, you need to be signed to a respected record label, release quality music to have longevity in your career as an artist and more. And it’s even more difficult as an independent artist since you don’t have the publicity that the industry and the record label give you, neither do you have the repertoire of artists the record label helps you collaborate with on your projects.

However, it is not impossible. Rather, if you do the right things at the right time, it can prove to be easier than you think and it will provide you a more interesting experience and a career where you can be as creative with your music as you desire.

And in this article, I will provide you with some starting points, tips and key lessons you should follow as an independent artist to hopefully find your success in the end of your journey.

Define success

Firstly, to know if you are successful or not as an artist you have to set a goal for
yourself. Whether it is having a number 1 album, winning a Grammy, have a song of yours be considered a classic in music culture or just having enough money to support your loved ones, the first step to having a successful career in music is setting a goal for yourself which defines your “success”.

Having a goal will in turn give you a clear shot on what you want to achieve and will motivate you.

Do What You Enjoy

This one is rather obvious but a lot of artists get lost in their fame and lose their creativity cutting off from the lifespan of their careers chasing success.
To be successful, you must keep your creativity and do what you enjoy because that’s where quality music usually comes from. This applies to everybody, if you play an instrument, if you are a producer or a singer, these tips all apply to everyone.

We can take for example the independent artist Quadeca that arguably made the album of the year of 2022 with his phenomenal album “I Didn’t Mean To Haunt You”, without the control of a record label restricting his music he could form a very creative and cohesive project that carries a message, story and beautiful songs. If he didn’t do what he enjoyed and was following what the industry wanted him to do he wouldn’t have come up with this album.

Which is why I say that doing what you enjoy is extremely important if not the most important aspect in being an artist.

Link to the album I didn’t mean to haunt you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tbOspjJ5f0

Networking

Another very important aspect in being independent is the networking that the record label doesn’t do for you as an independent artist. Having a wide network of other artists willing to collaborate with you is an important step for success as you exchange fans with the other party you’re working with, making you gain more attention.
In addition, in many of these cases, the fans that came from the artist you’re working with stay to support you on your journey.

Make sure you're building a strong brand identity for yourself and your music.

A good way to grow your network is to do gigs and live performances where other artists are also performing, since a live audience will see you perform, they will more than likely pay attention to your music and even the other artists that are performing the same night could talk to you to work with you in the possible future.

Another good way to grow your network is social media, you can talk to other artists online or just promote your own content on social media. But beware, if you want to promote your content you need to do constant engaging posts on social media so you stay relevant online.

Consistency

An essential part of success is consistency, in quality and in quantity. Keep writing, keep producing, keep practicing.

Without good music how can you be successful? The answer is, you can’t. Especially if you’re independent, since your music won’t be forced onto people by a major label. You need to keep being consistent with your music so you’re giving the audience a reason to stay listening to your music.

Also, with consistency you can always evolve your sound and how you write to become a better artist overall, mastering your craft.

Where to post your music

This part is easy, you have to make sure that your music is available on as many platforms as possible, whether it’s YouTube, SoundCloud, Spotify, promoting it on twitter, Instagram, reddit etc.

Every platform has a specific audience so the only way to truly grow is to be on as many markets as possible so you get as many eyes on you as possible.

Network and collaborate with other artists and industry professionals while also constantly creating and releasing new content to engage your audience.

Promotion

As mentioned before, promotion is important and is the most common on social media, whether it is engaging content or just standard promotion.
You can pay others to put ads on their account for your music, like an Instagram story promoting you or a song you release.

Another option is trying to get reviews irl (in real life), you can get a stranger to listen to your song and get them to rate it and give you some pointers to be better from a listener’s perspective. It is important to get constructive criticism on your art for you to grow as an artist.

We can see a lot of people on YouTube shorts going around and getting strangers on the street to listen to a song they made and give them an honest opinion.

Keep Your Health In Check

This is the last and most important part as without it, all the previous parts are impossible to accomplish in the long run. Without good health, you can’t maintain the same quality of music and eventually the quantity will suffer a big hit as you won’t be able to write.Which is why as an artist you should always make sure that you’re in the best shape possible. Loving your work is good but being a workaholic is a bit much even if it’s for the sake of consistency.

Ignoring your health can lead to many physical and mental consequences that you shouldn’t face. From a writer’s block to losing a dangerous amount of weight and strength due to ignoring your nutrition for work, maybe even going a bit unstable mentally, all of these can happen if an artist ignores his health.

As an example, we can take the same artist as before, Quadeca. Because he was spending 10+ hours in the studio just trying to make good music, he lost sleep, weight and even friends. He went through a dark time because he was working non-stop.
Now I did mention that the album was phenomenal but it could’ve held the same quality if he just cut off from the hours of work to maintain his health and just took more days to complete the album he made.

Conclusion

To conclude the article, becoming successful while independent can be summarized in 7 key parts: Defining success, doing what you enjoy, networking, consistency, choice of platform, promotion and most importantly keeping your health in check.
If you follow these 7 tips you will eventually become a well-known artist, maybe locally but possibly even internationally as long as you infuse all those with a healthy amount of hard work.

Sources:

https://www.soundtech.co.uk/news/finding-success-as-an-independent-artist

https://indieconnect.com/12-strategies-long-term-success-indie-artist/

https://www.rostr.cc/profile/deadair0/management/roster

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYCr8y9cxKs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tbOspjJ5f0