How Can A Local Band Become Professional?
“Wow, you sound like an actual band!”
The ultimate back-handed compliment a music group can receive.
What they mean to say is you sound professional as opposed to amateur. You’re not known by the masses but you could be.
Every band is an actual band, but how do some bands manage to do it professionally?
5 differences between a local band and professional band
Reliability
Professional bands can be relied on to put on a performance where they play in tune, don’t have extraordinarily long gaps of time between songs, aren’t too drunk, know their equipment, and don’t go over or under time. In other words, they act professional and treat it like a job. This is a skill any band can acquire in a short amount of time. It just takes some experience.
Uniqueness
Does anyone else sound like you? This isn’t required, but it helps to stand out. People like to be surprised, so don’t always be what you think the audience wants. At the same time, don’t try to be unique. That’ll just result in something contrived. Be yourself, unfiltered, and chances are something unique will come of it.
Presence
When you’re performing, are you putting your heart into it? Are you looking up from your instrument? Are you moving your body with the music and connecting with the words you’re singing? Are you acknowledging your bandmates, talking to the audience and putting on a dynamic performance? Anyone can recite their repertoire but it takes presence to create a moment.
Marketing
Booo, but yes. There are no rules for how to express yourself but people need to know you exist. You have to put yourself out there. You don’t have to make cringetoks. You can do whatever you want but you need to be loud and consistent.
Accept help
Some people think there’s honor in doing it all on your own, but a lot of the most popular musicians get help with writing and performing. They also have set designers, costume designers, coaches, managers, and visual artists to create merch and album artwork. You don’t necessarily need all that to go pro, but why try to do everything yourself when as a musician, you should be focusing on the music? If you have the opportunity, let people who want to help you.
Before you take on any of that, make sure you’re in the right band.
Then look around at where you are. Unless you’re in a city where you can get discovered by the music industry just by playing live shows, you need to focus online.
The most underrated tactic musicians use to pop off
If you want to become a professional entertainer, start entertaining. With millions of people on their phones constantly looking to be entertained, it’s time to start making your band’s online presence a priority. Musicians hate this one trick because they think they’ll have to post pandering, trend-chasing content to get noticed. The truth is if you’re not able to post something you like, or your music isn’t good enough to stand on its own, you’re the problem.
If you enjoy your music and you enjoy playing it, put it on video, make sure the image and sound quality is decent and you’re done. It can be as simple as that. Or create a story around your music. If you’re authentic and enjoy the process, you will attract fans.
The old way is gone
We all want to get discovered like like Fleetwood Mac and Queen did. It would be cool to play cool music to cool people in cool venues until an A&R person signs you, but that’s not a realistic hope anymore. Labels won’t talk to you unless you have a large, engaged online following.
If you want to become a professional musician, you need to get good at playing live and have a robust online presence.
Becoming a professional musician is one of the most frustrating paths someone can take on, but it’s possible to find success if you treat it like a job, align yourself with the right people and stay persistent. Or just join Incubator.
