Turning your band or other music industry passion into a successful business isn’t just about writing great songs and booking gigs - it’s about setting up the right foundation to protect your assets, manage your money, and create growth opportunities. Whether you’re an indie artist or a full band, taking the right legal and financial steps can save you from major headaches down the road.

In this post, we’ll cover the essential building blocks of establishing your band as a business, including forming an LLC, setting up a bank account, creating a band agreement, managing finances, and more.

‘Tis the season of Spotify Wrapped! Musicians and bands all over the world have been scrolling through their year-end numbers from the popular, albeit controversial, streaming platform. Though we can all agree that Spotify should pay artists more, the music player isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, 286 million monthly active users stream through the platform according to their Q1 2020 report. That’s a lot of users! With that many people listening, you’d think it would be easy to get your music in front of a bunch of people who haven’t heard it before right? Well… wrong. You’re competing with more than 3 million creators, from bands just starting out all the way to the mega-celebrities who’s new songs instantly top the charts. So how do you get more listens from new listeners on your music? It all has to do with the Spotify algorithm - BART - and how your music works with it. This is a very deep rabbit hole my friends, so today, we’re going to work on a basic understanding of the Spotify algorithm and which tactics you can use to increase your chances of your music being played to new fans.

With all of the various shut downs this year, many bands and musicians have turned to live streaming to keep the music alive and play shows for fans. Right now, there’s really no other way to play live “shows” for your followers. However, the art of live streaming successfully is full of nuance and know how. When you show up to a venue to play a show, you automatically have a great backdrop, a sound engineer, and a light display for your show. Online, it’s 100% up to you to create the experience. So where do you even begin when planning to play an online live stream?

Right now, a band or musician’s online presence is everything. There’s little to no opportunity to play live shows, so online promotion and posting is about the only way to reach their audience. However, musicians are musicians - they’re brilliant at playing music, but transitioning to a 100% online strategy can be hard for some. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing my tips and tricks to marketing your band online for begginners. Today, I’m going to give an overview of creating your online brand on social media, organically (without paying).