1. You have to NEED to make it.

Wanting to make it is not enough. It must be your one true calling. If you’re willing to be broke, with no direction home, you might possibly make it. Sacrifice is the key element. If you’re not willing to sacrifice your home, your relationship, forgo children and sleep on the floor when you’re forty, don’t expect to make it in music, certainly don’t expect to sustain.

2. You have to be great.

Good is not good enough. You’ve got to blow our minds.

3. You can’t do it alone.

That’s an Internet fiction, from a decade past, that if you just posted something online it could cut through the noise. You need a team:

a. A lawyer

b. A manager

c. An agent.

A lawyer to make sure you don’t sign bad deals that hobble you forever.

A manager to play interference, he who sells himself and makes his own deals is destined to piss people off.

And an agent to get you gigs.

An agent is hardest to get. A manager is never easy. But no act ever made it without a manager. (more…)