How to have a music career on a budget
by Rick Barker
Transscription by E. Pethos
I’m excited that that you are here! […]
Today I got this whole list of things that have been popping up.
Today we’re going to talk about budgeting. A lot of people, especially now in this current situation, are really wanting to learn how to do things on a budget. Quite honestly, you should always do things on a budget.
What happens when people get tons of money, like those lotto winners, they go out and get all this money and become miserable… If you’re constantly thinking about how to get the best quality for the least amount of money spent possible – I’m not talking about cheap. There’s a difference between cheap and cost-effective. But I’m a big believer in always using cost-effective ways to do things. Then what that does, it gives you a budget for other things, when you need it.
So for example, PR, a lot of people are going to want publicize something. Well, you’re going to spend $1500 a month, maybe it gets seen by the right person, maybe it doesn’t. You could take that budget and you could put it towards Facebook and Instagram ads, running YouTube ads. There are a lot of different things that you could do better with that budget. But what we have to make sure, is when we start spending money to be visible, we want to make sure what they’re seeing is quality.
There’s a lot of great, free (how’s that for your budget?), FREE resources that are out there. Like Canva, there are some apps, I’m trying to think of the top of my head, for Instagram that we’ve used, that make really quality visual. ‘Cause that’s the visual part, that’s what’s going to get their attention. First it’s the visual or the audio.
There’s ways to record really cool songs on your phone; you can get the Garageband app. You don’t need to neccesarily have to go into a studio. That’s very good on the budget, right?! Free app, record music. What you may want to do then, if you’re saving your money the right way and you’re budgeting properly, let’s say you don’t know how to record, well then maybe that’s what you’d spend some of your budget on. Go buy a course or pay someone to teach you how to do something.
‘Cause once you know it and once you have it, then you can just take that part of the budget away and apply that some place else. Does that make sense? So if you don’t know, how to do something, you’re going to have to pay someone to do it for you. So if I’m on a budget, I’m going into YouTube and I’m typing in “how to record a song on my phone, how to create my own beat, best platforms to create images for social media. There’s a lot of things that you could be typing into this very channel, that you’re watching this video right now and get information for free.
But you have to be willing to invest the time to be able to do it. If you’re on a low budget, be very picky about where you’re spending your money. Where can you do things that you don’t have to spend. Those are the things I would do myself. Also, start reaching out to people. There’s a lot of people in your area or in your circle of influence, as they call it, that if you don’t have a budget for graphics, maybe someone you know is graphic designer. Don’t have money to hire someone to shoot videos? Maybe someone in your circle of influence is able to shoot videos.
You just got to get resourceful, is what you have to do. What I would do is I would go on my personal Facebook page and I would say “Hey, I’m looking to do, you know, [XYZ], does anyone know anyone who is out of work right now? Does anyone know anyone who’s a student, who can use this? My son is in a video class in High School and one of their projects was to record a music video. Well, who has access to a whole bunch of artists? Me. Made it very simple. I was able to get him taken care of with someone who needed someone as well.
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Remember, promotion and sales are two different things. You want to promote what you do get them to wherever you have them and then try to sell them there. The other thing that I think some people are spending money on, that they shouldn’t right now are high expensive videos. If you’re on a budget, you can take one video and let’s say that you’re going to spend $2500 on a video… Do you know how many quality videos you can get for $2500 instead of just having one?! You can get it into five. Remember, people are watching on their phone, they’re trying to stick out. So you don’t have to spend crazy amounts of money on your recording, find the songs that you need, find whatever it is that you do.
But you have to just think about it like this: If this money runs out and I can never replenish it, what are the things that I would want in order to be able to best go out and showcase who I am?
But always think like you’re on a low budget. If you go look at some of the wealthiest people in the world, there’s one man who’s worth 100 million dollars and I think he still drives his 1985 Chrysler or something like that. So people with wealth are always looking at ways to budget. What I’m excited about is that word is even in your vocabulary, because for most people it’s not.
If you found this helpful, I would love for you to share it with someone! […]
