In the age of the DIY musician, it’s easier now than ever to build your own career, but many artists think that do-it-yourself means do-everything-yourself. Many of us have fallen into the trap of thinking that not only should we write our own music, but we should also record it, mix it, master it, market it, shoot our own music videos, do our own taxes and accounting, design our own merch/album art, and play every instrument on our songs, just to name a few. Quite frankly, it’s exhausting, but what’s more troubling is seeing countless musicians stuck in the same place they’ve been for years, sometimes even decades, and not understand why.
Much of the time, the culprit is a stubborn refusal to admit that they can’t do everything themselves, and so they continue to move at a snails pace and put out mediocre work every now and then. Here is my advice: if you want to move your career forward, you need to specialize, and delegate the irrelevant tasks to someone else (ideally a professional). If you aren’t convinced yet, here are three good reasons why the specialist route is a good idea:
1. You’re better at what you do
When you specialize in one area, you naturally become much better at it than if you were to try and be good at many things. Makes sense, yet I see it happen all the time where musicians are too afraid to commit to one thing. We know that doing nothing certainly won’t move our careers forward, but many of us forget that trying to do everything also won’t move us forward. Susan Rogers (producer for Prince) said this beautifully in a lecture she gave at my music program: “You need to develop your skills in series, not in parallel. Once you get good at one thing and can make a living from it, then you can start to explore new areas”.
For example, if you’re a songwriter, stop distracting yourself by trying to also become a professional at mixing so you can mix your own music. This won’t help you because you simply won’t have the same hours of experience that the professional mixing engineer has gained by devoting all their time to their profession. Furthermore, by devoting too much of your time to something other than songwriting, you also won’t have the same hours of experience as fellow songwriters. It’s okay to dabble in other areas for fun, but don’t stray off the path.
2. You’re more desirable
Let’s say you want to hire a producer for your album, and you’re browsing through various social media to check out people’s profiles. Who looks like the better choice? Someone with “producer, mixing engineer, mastering engineer, songwriter, arranger, composer, singer, wine mom, ghost hunter” in their profile, or just “producer”? Although a ghost hunter would be pretty cool, I’d probably go with the person who just has “producer” in their description. This is because when we look at a profile with several different job titles, we don’t know what they’re actually good at, and I’m certainly not going to spend any time figure out what their producing abilities are.
With your own profile, I recommend having maximum two job titles in the description. For example, I put “artist and songwriter” in my profile. I’ve also seen other combinations such as “arranger and orchestrator”, or “producer and engineer”. Whatever you decide, it’s generally better to use two titles that are similar rather than completely different. Putting “songwriter and mastering engineer” together isn’t ideal because a mastering engineer won’t be hired for their songwriting skills, or vice versa. What would be better is to pair “mixing and mastering engineer” or “songwriter and producer” together, because someone who hires a mastering engineer is less likely to have a use for their songwriting skills, while the mastering engineer’s mixing skills are much more likely to be useful.
3. Having a niche reduces competition
A commonly held belief is that by being decent in many areas, you have less competition, the logic being that you aren’t at risk of losing a potential gig to someone qualified in an area you aren’t. I believe this stems from a mindset of lacking; the belief that gigs are far and few, so one must take everything they can get. It’s easy to fall into this trap, but if we look at the most successful people in the music industry, they usually work within a specialized area. In fact, many top industry names such as producers and engineers choose to specialize even further by choosing to work in only a couple genres of their choice.
It seems counterintuitive to narrow down your job title, as you’re essentially excluding potential clients/colleagues from working with you, but it actually has the opposite effect. Let’s say you’re a producer who specializes in hip-hop. When hip-hop artists are looking for a producer, you’re immediately going to stand out against those with fifty job titles in their profiles because they know you have many more hours of experience. You’re also more likely to pop up in their searches because chances are, they’re going to type into the search bar “hip-hop producers” instead of just “producers”.
As an artist/songwriter, having a niche is even more crucial. While with jobs such as mixing, producing, or even managing, you generally don’t want to get too specific in your specialization, as an artist/songwriter, the more you can specialize the better. Simply putting “pop artist” in your profile isn’t necessarily bad, but being more specific and putting “synthpop artist” or “indie pop artist” already gives us a better idea of your sound. If you want to go the extra mile, you can write something such as “all-female orchestral synthpop band”. By choosing a niche, you aren’t competing with all the other artists who simply describe themselves as “pop” to prove why you’re different. Furthermore, by choosing a niche, you naturally grab people’s attention with your specificity, especially if it’s unusual.
Summary
I believe that deep down, we all know that the specialist route carries many, many benefits. However, we’re too afraid of committing, usually because we don’t want to miss out on opportunities, or we’re worried we’ll regret it later and can’t change it. Understand though that you will create much more opportunity for yourself by committing to something, whether it’s your profession, your genre, the instrument you’re learning, or anything else in life. Remember, the most successful people are specialists, not dabblers.
As a final note, I do believe that having a diverse skillset is a very good idea in the era of the DIY musician. In fact, I highly encourage it. Having the basic skills to do things such as record demos from home, promote yourself, or book your own shows make you more independent as an artist. But what happens all too often is musicians get distracted and neglect their songwriting for weeks, months, or even years. Instead of trying to be a “jack of all trades and master of none”, choose to be a “jack of all trades and master of one”.