What do new musicians really need?

I really like it when artists hit me up and explain their story. I get a real understanding of where they’re coming from and what level they are at. It stops being about the music and starts being about building the relationship and context. This is very important to me. What makes me a little uneasy is when I’m told that the reason they aren’t progressing musically is because they need a … (insert a generic, music related profession here). I’ve heard people saying they need the following people to progress musically: 

•Promoter
•Publisher
•Manager
•Marketing manager
•Distributor  

Ideally, we’d all like to have one of these, but in my experience one isn’t necessary when your career is in its infancy. I feel like our South African rappers get this idea that having these people will solve their problems in a few weeks and they will rise to fame in a matter of months. They go on long missions to find people to help them promote or manage them and they are usually disappointed. This disappointment leads to conflict and then they leave in search of the next potential manager. It’s one massive cycle that I’ve seen many artists place themselves in and it’s painful watching them do the same thing expecting different results.   

Q: How should it be done, Adrian? 

A: I don’t really know. There are many ways to peel an orange.  

Look…  

What I do know is that in the beginning stages you should be spending more time on polishing your product, getting mixes that sound like they deserve to be on national radio, making sure all your social media accounts are in order, developing a mailing list of people that love what you do and so on and so forth. The list is long and a bit painful and I suppose I’ll go into it at some point this year, but for the time being a simple google search will suffice. The amount of grunt work you’ll be doing in the beginning stages is going to be ridiculous. No manager is going to want to do this for you. I hate to be a pessimist, but don’t break your back looking for one until you can effectively manage yourself. This will also ensure you don’t get screwed over when you eventually do find a manager.   

After you’ve built a reputation and some sort of a following online and offline, something amazing will start to happen… 

…All of a sudden, people will start contacting you for features and you’ll get rejected less when you approach promoters to perform at their shows. Your following becomes your leverage. People look at you and start to see you as a beacon that will make money and attract people just by performing a few songs.   

Q: How long does this thing take, Adrian? 

A: No one knows. You just keep at the grunt work until you start to see the change in people’s attitude towards your music. A sweet spot that flattens any expectation is about 10 years, but this is a figure I’ve sucked out of my thumb from all the case studies I’ve been exposed to.   

It’s at this stage that you may get an offer or two for management or promotion. You need to be very careful because some people out there are fly-by-nights that aren’t going to do much. If there are contracts involved then be even wearier. You don’t want to end up having to pay people money for sitting around doing nothing. As part of your grunt work at this stage, you’ll be contacting small hip hop events to do shows, trying to get onto radio shows and on radio playlists, trying to get good quality videos shot as well as doing all that social media and mailing list upkeep I spoke about earlier. After you have a few videos, a fan base that exceeds a few thousand people on each social media platform and people are actively posting and commenting on your work, then you can start considering getting help from managers, promoters and the rest. 

My conclusion is that you don’t need them in the beginning stages purely because no one will take better care of your brand than you will. If you can’t take care of your own brand then how do you expect people to invest money and time in you? My advice would be to get on your pc and start looking for ways to polish your brand. Speak to artists around you and ask them about how they got their success. 

Good Luck, 

SB