It’s All In Your Head: A Wake Up Call To Struggling Musicians Everywhere

JJanuary is usually a very depressing time in the lives of many people. The holidays are over and debts, bills and life’s challenges begin to stack up; the general search for various kinds of fulfilment continue and for the musician, new goals must be set while you try not to forget the lapses in the previous goals of last year that were not met.

Do you ever wonder why after everything you have tried – social networking, radio plugging, recording sessions of a hundred cover songs, a gazillion photo and video shoots nobody still notices you? Well, I have good news for you. Ready? Here goes,

Stop trying so hard.

This is not what you thought I would say right? Well, sit back and instead of picking out the negatives find the positives. If you like draw up a list of pros and cons of your music career so far.

Photo credit: Nikos Koutoulas on Flickr

Stop comparing yourself to your fellow musicians signed to major labels because you will never have access to the kind of promotion budget that they have. And guess what? You have access to something they can never have, which is a higher potential to connect directly with your community in an up close and personal manner by getting involved in the basic issues that affect everyone. If you are not interested in people, how do you expect them to be interested in you?

Get out of your head and stop feeling sorry for yourself. Instead get up and find a way to bring some change to your immediate environment. It is a lot like making friends where there is an exchange of interests and eventually some kinds of mutual benefits gained along the way.

I hope this helps you to throw out the trash defeatist ideas in your head and replace them with a winning attitude.

Happy new year!

This guest post comes from Christine Ben-Ameh, independent artist & songwriter, currently signed with JTV Digital, a digital distribution company allowing artists & labels to get their music to major digital retail stores and monetize their content online.