How to ensure you achieve your artist goals in 2019

As 2019 has finally arrived, many producers’ thoughts within the music industry will be focused on how they can go about implementing their strategy. Whether it’s getting more Spotify streams, more shows, or something else, everybody has ambitions as to what they would like to achieve over the next several months. But one problem often faced is that producers are unable to achieve their goals for whatever reason. During this article, we’re going to cover why people are unable to achieve their goals and solutions to combat them to achieve the best result in the music industry.

Firstly, many producers within the music industry lack consistency when it comes to accomplishing their goals. At the start of the year, they regularly set out ambitious goals to achieve incredible things. However, for one reason or another, they lack the drive to actually complete what they set out to do. In order to have motivation for a particular goal, you need to visualize what your success will be like once it’s completed. If you truly want to accomplish it, you will find the motivation to achieve it in a timely manner.

Another reason why producers sometimes don’t achieve their goals is that they simply don’t aim high enough. If you only try to get 10k streams a month, that’s all you will ever achieve. Meanwhile, if you aim for 100k per month, you will hit the 10k much quicker as you’ll be putting in the work to get 100,000 plays. Likewise with growing an audience on social media, the higher you aim, the better result you will obtain.

When you aim for big goals as a music producer, it can admittedly be very daunting in the early stages. After all, doubt and worries surrounding failure often enter your mind. Therefore, the best strategy is to break down the big goal into a series of smaller ones. For example, let’s create a scenario in which you want to hit a million plays on your music during 2019. Here’s how to do it:

1. Break it down mathematically. 1 million plays divided by 12 months is 83,000 plays per month.
2. Understand your release schedule. If you’re releasing once a month and able to get 45k plays per track, consider increasing your release schedule to twice a month. This will allow you to surpass your 83k target. So the goal simply becomes to produce music at a faster rate (whilst maintaining the standard).
3. You could also figure out where similar artists are getting plays, and make it your objective to get your music in those places. eg. If you can get 20 playlists per month that give 4k streams each, that’s 80k plays. Release radar and discover weekly should take care of the rest.

Taking this broken down approach will allow you to slowly (but surely) achieve every single goal that you set for yourself. By doing the math and figuring out the exact amount of work it will take to become successful & hit your targets, you will develop a strong work ethic that will allow you to achieve it.

If you set yourself a big goal, ensure that is “smart” so you’re able to measure your performance over time. This acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time focused. This is so that you are able to have a clear definition of what success looks like for you as a music producer. By being able to track your progress, you’ll also be able to see if you need to put in more hours to achieve it, or if you’re working at a reasonable rate.

Also, being too free with your time is a crucial reason as to why it takes a long time to achieve ambitions. For example, if you are watching Netflix for 3 hours a day, that’s several hours which you are not spending on your artistic career. Although it’s important to have a work-life balance, it’s also mandatory to work enough hours so that you can accomplish whatever you set out to do in a timely manner.

When people make their goals public, it can often reduce the motivation in which they have to pursue them. This is for a variety of reasons. According to multiple psychological studies, when you announce your goals to your friends & family, it decreases your chances of obtaining it due to the fact you’ve already released the positive energy surrounding the accomplishment. By working hard & grinding, it will give you a lot more determination to go out and actually achieve your dreams. As the famous saying goes, you need to “walk the walk” if you can talk the talk. 

Not having a team surrounding your artist brand can be detrimental to the success of your career. As well as producing for several hours a day, many people also have to learn social media, and a plethora of other things, to ensure that they actually gain attention to their music. If you have somebody writing articles, shooting photos and creating video content, it frees up a lot of your time to continue making music. Being surrounded by the wrong people can also impact your career severely. If you are hanging out with people who have small dreams, it’s probable that their mindset will rub off on you. But likewise, talking to and constantly being with people that have big dreams will encourage you to work hard so you can accomplish your ambitions.

Having a strategy for accomplishing your goals is extremely important. However, by recognizing and accomplishing these common pitfalls within the music industry, it will allow you to move closer towards your ambitions every single day.