How do band succeed - internet consensus?

While building my music streaming app, it was clear to me that I needed to understand the space I was “disrupting”, (or better put “improving” if you don’t like the strangely aggressive silicon valley phase). A key element to understand was “How do bands/artists succeed?”, not being an industry expert myself the best I could do was scour the internet for a broad consensus. Below are some of the less obvious reasons I discovered…

Meet people…

A lot of us like to think ourselves lone geniuses that just need to get in a dark room, focus and produce our musical magic. While this is indeed important it ignores what makes musical careers and great artists; people. We might pretend the outside work is unimportant, or that we only need to interact with it through sterile graphical user interfaces. But that is not what great artists do. They get out. They gig, they go to gigs, they make friends, they know lots of other bands and interact with tons of music fans. Yes, they made time to practice their instruments, write music and record. But you need to leave your houses now and again to interact personally with the wider music world. 

Finish your work…

Yes, I know that song you have been working on for two years isn’t quite perfect enough. You need to redo the drums, the vocals aren’t crisp enough and the second verse does not quite thematically tie into the first, but come on. Be honest, your favourite artist released their first album not long after they formed. They got stuff out the door. Even if at times it wasn’t perfect, it didn’t matter because fans heard past the rough edges to hear the ideas within. I am not saying you should release slop, that base is covered by the trillion dollar AI monstrosities, but stop going over the same song, band photo or social media content over and over again. The best artists know when to stop and are productive, not just with their work but with their quantifiable output. 

Stay healthy…

You're too busy writing and recording music to cook so you order fat filled takeaways multiple times a week. Bad idea. A good musician is a healthy musician. If you're overweight and unfit then you're not going to be giving out much energy to the crowd during gigs and have barely any energy after work to record music. 

Don’t be arrogant…

Confidence is important especially in an industry where you have to stand out in an overly packed field. But arrogance is different. If you are convinced you're amazing you will be blind to your flaws. If you're blind to your flaws you can’t improve and believe it or not, if you're going to reach the top you will need to improve a lot. Furthermore, if you believe you're the musical Messiah, you're not going to treat your lessers (naming everyone else) very well and as stated above you will need good relationships to succeed. 

This is of course not all you need to succeed as a musician/band but it’s a good start and not what everyone thinks of. It isn’t all about music quality, there are many other factors of work. But despite how difficult succeeding in music can be, just remember not to give up.