Standing out in an overpopulated and under-respected industry is nearly impossible. Musician’s trying to project through the cacophony of competitors have the odds heavily stacked against them.
While in school, we focus day in and day out on perfecting every single detail of various solos, etudes, and excerpts but for many the ability to beautifully navigate Chopin’s Nocturnes, or stylistically execute a solo from Mahler’s 5th Symphony will not be enough to land you a stable job in our industry. You must go beyond your ability on the instrument and learn how to develop your identity in order to build your brand, your way.
In today’s oversaturated market, one must be able to set themselves apart from the abundant supply of other candidates and qualified performers. Currently, this means finding a way to build a presence online through the creation of entertaining, engaging, and high quality production projects. The creation of these products can be both very frustrating and extremely costly. Most of us do not have the budget or funding to to hire top-tier professionals to create and build an identity for us, so we must find an alternative way to create and develop these high level materials. So what should one do? Develop the skills yourself!
Learning basic graphic design, web design, and video editing skills may sound like an insurmountable task, and for some it will be, but those who persevere, and succeed at building these skills will give themselves a crucial edge to finding success in this industry.
Before we begin this journey towards becoming a well rounded and technologically savvy musician, you must ask yourself:
“Who am I?”
“What do I do?”
“How do I want to be seen?”
These answers will begin the process of shaping your identity. Once you have a grasp on who you are, what you do, how you want to be seen, we will begin learning how to start building our image and our brand ourselves.
