Many independent artists mistakenly believe they have to be great at a thousand things to succeed, but it’s really only three.

Yes, it feels like you have to master everything from video editing to writing, to networking, and on and on, but that’s simply not the case.

Most of the opportunities you’re looking for can be found downstream of nailing only a handful of high-value tasks that matter most.

I believe that if you can master these three skills, the rest of what you might feel compelled to do will fall into place as a result.

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Skill #1: Build a brand

Your brand is your world.

It is both who you are to your audience and where they can find you.

Your brand is the container into which you will place every song, every image, every video, and even every listener, and it will serve as your guide for creating new music and content.

Strong branding replaces hundreds of decisions with just one.

Yes, your profile picture, content, and bio matter, but those things are not your brand.

They’re simply pieces of it.

Much as a game designer or author constructs an alternate reality to tell a compelling story, so too does an artist cultivate a world to house their music and the feeling attached to it.

And just as an author or game designer might enhance or expand that reality through subsequent works without the necessity of creating something new from scratch, so too can you improve upon your brand without having to rebuild it time and again.

Great brands evolve.

For context, take a moment to consider how music is consumed these days—people make playlists for working out, going to the beach, or date night.

There are albums and artists devoted to sleep, gaming, meditation, and more.

Everything is attached to a feeling, emotion, or activity.

This shared reality is the essence of your brand.

Ask yourself, “What do I want my listeners to feel,” then build a world around the answer.

A properly constructed brand is an extension of the artist that makes it and the music that fills it, a place where like-minded people (your audience) can come together to share that set of emotions and dreams that only you and your music can provide.

Build a brand.

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Skill #2: Become prolific

The most successful artists create a ton of music.

And it’s not just in the age of streaming—this has always been the case.

I have been blessed to work alongside some highly talented and incredibly successful people in my career, and I personally know musicians who have sold tens of millions of records and still write new material every day.

This is what it means to be an artist.

Yes, we want to build businesses, play shows, connect with people—all the things—but we chose music as a pursuit because we love to create music.

If the process of making music doesn’t bring you joy and fulfillment, then I question whether or not this is the career path for you.

Because the reward for building a successful career in music is that we earn the freedom to make more music.

This is the game.

One of the most recurring questions I get is, “How often should I release new music?”

I’ve attempted to answer that in many ways over the years, but, for me, I just know that the more opportunities I have to make music, and the more songs I can release, the happier I am.

And on top of that, the more music I create and release, the better I seem to get at both.

My guess is you’re probably the same.

So I say make as much music as you possibly can, and when you’ve got a completed song on your hands, put it out and move on to the next one.

Don’t get stuck in procrastination disguised as perfection.

Just do the thing.

Create a ton.

Become prolific.

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Skill #3: Share your work

No one will listen if they don’t know you exist.

Now, there are plenty of artists who love to create with no intent to share, and that’s totally fine.

But if you’re anything like me, my guess is you’d like someone else to hear what you’ve been cooking up.

If that’s you, then you have to share your work.

This means marketing.

Of course, it’s difficult to learn how to do all the things well and still find time to make as much music as you can, which is why I’m such a huge proponent of ads.

Ads are the best way to automate your marketing so you can spend less time creating content and trying to go viral and more time just doing what you love—making music.

This is why it’s so important to build a brand to house your creative output.

It’s like a big bucket.

If you can automate your marketing through ads, you can pull people into that bucket on autopilot, and the bucket keeps them there for the long haul.

Continue filling it with new material that will serve your audience, and you’ll earn the freedom to spend your days creating music (which is what you wanted to do in the first place).

Easy.

Marketing your work extends your reach and pulls people into your network, creating new opportunities for your business.

Becoming prolific leads to higher-quality output, which will, in turn, increase the quality of your network over time.

And building a brand retains your audience, serves them at scale, and communicates professionalism to anyone who might come knocking on your door.

Build a brand, become prolific, and share your work.

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