As a new independent artist, you’ll inevitably make mistakes. While these can be valuable learning experiences, I’d like to help you avoid some common pitfalls that might take time to identify. By steering clear of these, you can focus your energy on moving in the right direction.

Here’s a significant one you might not notice until years later.

Consider Your Music as a Business

If you make music purely for enjoyment and aren’t concerned about making a living from it, you can disregard this. However, if earning from your music is on your mind, it’s something worth considering.

You might think, “I’m an indie musician and don’t want to be a sleazy businessperson.” Yet, sharing links and posts everywhere online isn’t sleazy? Viewing your music as a business involves finding an audience that genuinely loves and supports your music—not just friends who like and comment on your social media posts. You could have numerous likes on your Instagram posts, appear on niche top lists, and feature in music articles, but if your Spotify monthly listeners count is low, it shows limited engagement. Many of these listeners might come from playlists shared among fellow artists, where the primary audience is other musicians supporting each other.

Consider the story of a renowned musician who, as an experiment, played in the New York subway for a day. Though hundreds of thousands passed by, few stopped to listen, and even fewer gave money. Despite being a world-class musician, he earned around $20 for the entire day. This illustrates that if your music reaches the wrong audience, it goes unnoticed, regardless of your talent.

Think about your own music taste—you probably wouldn’t listen to music you don’t enjoy. Even if Taylor Swift has millions of fans, randomly asking people on the street if they like her music might yield only a small percentage of yeses. Similarly, if you asked people to listen to your music, the number who would enjoy it would likely be lower than those who like Taylor Swift.

Therefore, it’s crucial to precisely target your audience. Consider well-known artists whose music resembles yours. Fortunately, tools like Facebook/Instagram ads and Google/YouTube ads allow you to pinpoint your target audience accurately. If your songs are in German, you might target countries where German is prevalent. If your genre is synthpop, focus on fans of that genre and so on.

Targeting the right audience increases the likelihood of people appreciating your music, more so than random individuals or just friends and family.