So, you have been singing with the worship band for a long time now, honed your guitar skills, and written some decent songs and now you are ready to break into the Christian music scene.I am here to tell how not to succeed! Yes, that’s correct, how not to succeed!
First, make a CD without any forethought. Record it at multiple studios and use all of your friends regardless of their level of talent. Mix and master it yourself then send it off to the absolute cheapest place to reproduce them and make 1000 copies of it. Don’t put a bar code on it – it’s just money well spent! Plan a CD release party. It will be a huge success and you will sell at least 100 copies of your new CD! Ask people to sign your mailing list.
Now I know you are probably saying to yourselves “this sounds like what I should be doing. What’s wrong with that? Other than mixing and mastering myself that is.”Here’s where you start to set yourself up for failure. 1. Never set goals or make any plans of how this will work or where you want to go with your music ! 2. After your big CD release concert, go home and promptly forget to add all of those names to your data base. Better still, don’t even create a database ! 3. Now you need to sell the other 900 CD’s. So for distribution place a box in the back of your car and keep them there for all future sales. 4. Under no circumstance should you ever be proactive about your music career. Always wait for others to contact you. 5. Sign up for all sorts of contests and seminars. Spending your hard earned money on related fees will greatly add to your lack of success. 6. Create a xianity space and a mymusicespace page [and as many other similar sites] and don’t learn how to use them properly.
Check in on them only very sporadically. Ask random people to be your friend who will never really be interested in you or your music. Friends from far away countries are very cool, they certainly won’t be coming to one of your gigs anytime soon. 7. Find as many different places to list yourself as an artist online and then do nothing about it. For example, CD Baby, Taxi, Indieheaven, Garageband…8. Email as many different venues as you can find but don’t keep track of who you email and never, absolutely never try calling someone to make a personal connection. That works way too well in securing gigs! 9. Here’s a great way to keep from succeeding. Design your own website. Make sure it’s not in any way, shape or form cool or attractive. Of course you wouldn’t want to find out how to optimize your site by adding metatags to your site to increase the number of hits to your page. That would be sheer folly!! {I’ve saved the best for last!} 10. Probably the most important tool to increase your chances of failure is to put everything in God’s hands and do nothing else.
This IS Christian music after all ! Peace, Bizzy
(Editors Footnote: Bizzy is a Musician from Conn. One would call her a cross between from Joni Mitchell to Sheryl Crow. She plays for churches as well as numerous Coffeehouses. BUT, probably her bigger claim to fame is the SoulFest in Gunstock, NH. www.TheSoulFest.com . Bizzy has shared the billing with people like “Tammy Trent”, “Chris Tomlin”, “Casting Crowns”, “Seventh Day Slumber”, etc. You can contact Bizzy thru www.BizzyBender.com & listen at www.MySpace.Com/BizzyBenderMusic.)
